The second conquest of paradise
by Hyperbion
Summary: The story of Aisling Brand, civilian Mechanic from the industrial core world Brink who signed up as a contractor for an IMC (Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation) freight voyage to the frontier aboard the Austraeus, the largest ship in the IMC fleet. The voyage is going fine until the Austraeus discovers that Demeter has been destroyed. A story set in the Titanfall universe.
1. Into the abyss

Disclaimer and other useful information:

I'm only going to write this once, so apply this message to every chapter posted.

I do not own Titanfall. If I did, this fanfiction would be posted on the wikia as canon, not here.

I don't own the universe _of_ Titanfall. The game itself is rich in lore. I don't own this lore, the universe, the characters of Titanfall, the weapons, starships, titans, Spectres or technology of Titanfall. Last time I checked, Titanfall and everything within it belonged to Respawn entertainment.

I'm just a guy writing a story for the players of Titanfall to supplement Titanfall's campaign.

Respawn, if you're reading this, please don't sue me. Message me on reddit at /u/akucera or here on fanfiction and I'll remove the fanfiction.

If you're reading this and you haven't played Titanfall, welcome! I recommend you support Respawn entertainment by buying and playing their fantastic game, but if you can't, you should watch the _Titanfall intro cinematic_ (you can find this on youtube) and any a video of a game of titanfall (also on youtube. The video itself doesn't matter, just make sure you have a rudimentary understanding of Titanfall gameplay.)

This fanfiction is rated MA. I intend to graphically describe everything with the greatest level of accuracy I can. This means that I will be describing, in detail, the inner workings of starships, weaponry, human biology in space, the bureaucracy of the governments of planets - and violence. Be prepared for written gore. I will give warning of gore in chapters where gore is present, for the squeamish of heart.

And now, let the show begin!

* * *

><p>"Jumping in Three! Two! On-" called the shuttle pilot from the flight deck, voice cut off as the micro jump drives kicked in and drowned out all other noise. Aisling caught a glimpse of Brink, her homeworld, out the shuttle's window before the ship jumped amidst the cruisers in orbit. She caught another glimpse of Brink out the shuttle's window – but from 'up' here, it looked very different.<p>

"Bye, Mum," she whispered. "I love you."  
>"I know, darling," came the reply in her earpiece, laced with tears. "If only I could come with you..."<p>

Aisling gritted her teeth. She wouldn't cry. "I'll be back in a few years, though."  
>"Take care of yourself," stressed her mother. "I mean it. If anything weird happens, get off the ship and come home. I'd rather you come home without any money than die as a statistic in another person's war."<p>

"I'll do my best. I'm just a mechanic, I'm not even going to be in any danger."

"Very well. Listen, I -"

"Attention, All personnel," called the shuttle pilot over the intercom. "We will be docking with the _IMS Austraeus_ in three minutes. As they interfere with our navigation computer's pre-docking coupling transmissions, please disable your personal radio-transmitters."

"Mum, I've got to go now," said Aisling. "I'll be back home soon, I promise."  
>"Okay," sniffed her mother. "I love you so very much." She began bawling now.<br>"Me too. I've got to go now – goodbye!"

Aisling flicked the switch on her communicator. She'd said goodbye to her brother and sister before she'd gotten on the shuttle, but her mother was rather sentimental and apparently wanted to talk to her right up until the last moment.

"Brace for acceleration in three, two, one, mark," said the intercom. The Shuttle's engines fired for a second and the shuttle began to drift toward the _Austraeus_.

_My new home for the next year, huh?_ thought Aisling. The _Austraeus _was one of the first ships to arrive on the frontier after the scouts. She was built for carrying a metric fuck-ton of freight – capable of hauling four dreadnaughts, given that they were disassembled during transit.

Dreadnaughts being, of course, the second-largest classification of military ship, smaller only than the enormous capital ships that defended the core worlds.

The shuttle had entered an enormous hole in the _Austraeus's_ hull – used to carry interstellar shipping crates or frigates – and was now nearing an airlock at the end of the container. Behind the shuttle a huge door rolled silently along tracks to complete the _Austraeus's_ hull.

After the initial rush to colonise the frontier worlds, the IMC had purchased the _Austraeus_ and her surviving sister-ship the _Dauntless _from their original owner. Now the twins were used to haul goods _back_ to the core worlds, making the jump direct from the frontier to the core (with no need to stop to refuel in-between) in just 2200 hours without cargo, 2900 hours with cargo. This trip would be simple – they'd warp from Brink to Venice 3 with some scrap computer parts, money, gold, blueprints, scientific research and other valuable items, trade them with the bewildered and undoubtedly amazed locals on the frontier, load up the _Austraeus_ with oil and metal, then jump back to Brink, completing the journey in about 6000 hours. The oil and metal would go on to IMC factories on Brink and Earth and would emerge as luxury goods for the upper class worlds – Earth, New Athens, Poseidon, etcetera – and money would find its way into Aisling's hands.

Due to their role, the _Austraeus_ and the _Dauntless _were unique in the universe. Four kilometres long, 900 metres high and wide and shaped like a giant cylinder, they were tied with the title as the largest ships ever made. Two centrifuges on the side for storing gravitationally-sensitive things and for living quarters. The whole thing rode a 500 metre long nuclear explosion to the stars. Their most unique features, however, where their legacy drives.

Starships used rockets to accelerate them forwards and warp or jump drives to compress the space in front of them and expand it out behind them - shortening the distance the ship had to travel. Jump drives only slightly compressed space but weighed (comparatively) nothing. Their small mass allowed the ship's rocket to quickly accelerate or decelerate the starship. Combined with their reasonable warp strength, a jump-capable ship could leap across a solar system in a few hours - great for military ships, who could even use their drives to jump out of a bullet's path if necessary. Warp drives weighed a metric fuckload and were mounted on large ships with the fuel capacity to travel longer distances. These ships accelerated slower than jump-capable ships but their top speed was _enormous_ – owing also to the fact that they were usually mounted on ships with large fuel tanks.

And then there were _Legacy_ drives. The greatest scientists and engineers of a generation lead by Sir Hammond himself built just four legacy drives for the four colony ships sent to the frontier. These drives were capable of compressing the space in front of a starship by _four hundred thousand_ times. They were also the size of a battleship and weighed as much as a cruiser – completely impractical for use on anything other than a superfreighter. With a legacy drive each of the colony ships could make the warp from the core worlds to the frontier in a few thousand hours, rather than tens of thousands of hours. Now, just the _Austraeus _and the _Dauntless_ remained of the original four.

"Deceleration in three, two, one, mark," said the intercom, and the shuttle's reverse thrusters pulsed, slowing the shuttle as it neared the airlock.

The airlock hissed, shuttle doors opened. The shuttle-ees began to unbuckle themselves from their seats and were immediately glad that they had purchased magnetic boots beforehand.

"Greetings, crew!" exclaimed a man standing upside-down in the airlock, hanging off the roof with his magnetic boots.

_Well. Up is a relative term in space._

"According to this," the man said, "you guys are the last shuttle to dock. We're going to be leaving for the IMC port at Venice 3 in a few hours, so get some rest and adjust to your designated time-zone before then. Make a line and come past me and I'll give you your briefing cards."

The man called out each person's name and handed them a card. Aisling was called early – usual for her, given her last name – and thus came to receive her card. The man glanced at her card and motioned in the general direction of her cabin before moving to the next person.

* * *

><p>Aisling Brand<p>

Cabin Q 7:12

Electrical engineer, hangar 42

This ship uses 26 hour days.

Time Zone -6 hours.

* * *

><p>...read Aisling, walking along the corridor toward her cabin. On occasions she had to duck or dodge to the side as other crew-members passed above or beside her, hanging upside down and off the walls with their boots. The card also showed a helpful map that described how the cabin numbering system worked. The letter corresponded to the hangar the crew area was nearby and the numbers were co-ordinates for the hangar's location – so, hers was in row seven, 12th from the end.<p>

_Hangar Q, deck 7, cabin 12. I think our shuttle docked at Hangar Q..._

She soon found a corridor leading to the crew area and began walking toward her cabin, which appeared to be on the roof until she oriented herself correctly. She pushed the entry button.

"Oi!" roared a woman inside. "Don't cha knock on your planet?!"

Said woman's shirt was floating in the low-gravity above her head, sleeping attire in her hands, arms covering her chest.

"We do," replied Aisling, who entered, closed the door and turned to give the woman some privacy. "Most of the time. Sorry."

A second later the door opened again. "You can look now!.."

Aisling floated inside, caught a bunk and swung toward it. "Sorry about before," she apologised.

"It's okay... whispered the woman. Aisling took another look at her, this time with her shirt on.

She was young, heavily tanned, and _very tall_. To be 1.9 metres high at – what, 170 Kilohours old? Her height, skin tone and accent gave it away.

"Let me guess – you're from Helios?" asked Aisling.  
>"Yeah!.."<p>

Aisling giggled. Helios was an IMC colony built on a small (and thus low-gravity) planet orbiting its sun rather closely. The thin atmosphere brought on by the low-gravity environment barely reduced the sun's glare, resulting in dark-skinned inhabitants. The low gravity meant that their spines tended to stretch out further than usual, leaving them incredibly tall – granted, this girl was probably _short_ back on Helios. Finally, the thin atmosphere meant that Helians tended to grow stronger lungs than humans living elsewhere. This lead to Helian voices naturally being louder than normal. At home, the sound of their voices wouldn't travel as far (due to the thin atmosphere). As a result Helians found it difficult to control their voices when moving to thicker atmospheres. Brink was the same size as Earth, but it's thick iron core made it's gravity slightly stronger than Earth's. The important thing about Brink, however, was that it's magnetic field extended far into space, making the manufacturing of orbital goods much easier as crews didn't have to deal with the sun's electromagnetic radiation. Similarly, the increased gravity on the surface meant that goods made to last on Brink would generally be strong enough to last anywhere and were thus highly sought-after amongst the people living on the upper-class worlds.

"I'm Aisling, of Brink."

"Pleased to meet you, Aisling..." the girl whispered. "I'm Sophia!" she shouted a moment later, before blushing at her outburst.

_I feel her pain. The atmosphere is thinner here than on brink. I'm having trouble being heard._

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in!" called Aisling.

The door opened, and four uniformed woman – by the looks of it, from Ahrax – strode in.  
>"Afternoon, ladies," said the first one, hair tied high, sunglasses hiding her eyes. "I'm IMC Officer Jenny Baxter, I'll be bunking with you. This is Je'lai, Evans and Street."<p>

" 'Morning," said Aisling. "Wait, it is still morning, right?" She checked her watch.

_Yep, 13:23 Am._

"Negative," said Baxter, eyebrow raised. "This ship uses 26 hour days, not 28 like Brink. 'Afternoon' starts at 13 o'clock, not 14. Our cabin has _also _been designated to run six hours behind the main clock. It's actually 15:23 hours. You ever flown on a starship before?"

"No..."

"_Marvellous_," said Baxter, sarcasm oozing from her words. "Please don't vomit in your sleep."

_So these guys are IMC, huh?_ thought Aisling as she hit the necessary buttons on her watch to synch it with the ship's clock. The Interstellar Mining Corporation's voyages were usually manned by half IMC-dedicated personnel and half contractors whom they'd hire along the way as the voyage required. These four would be regulars – soldiers, navigators, engineers, mechanics – hell, there'd be a couple salesmen in there too, to get the IMC the best deals when they traded with the frontier settlers. This was Aisling's first voyage with the IMC and by the looks of it the same was true for Sophia. Unlike the regulars, who wore silver and blue uniforms, Aisling and Sophia donned T-shirts and shorts. Aisling was glad she didn't bring any skirts. Zero gravity made them a tad – revealing, to say the least. T-shirts, evidently, weren't that much better. It would get better when the centrifuges turned on.

H_opefully this ismy last voyage with the IMC._ The IMC treated the inhabitants of the core worlds fairly – so Aisling knew she'd be paid at the end of it all – but they were known for being brutal to frontier settlers. They'd turn colonies upside-down at the slightest hint of oil or tritium buried below. They'd tear apart entire cities to capture a single outlaw. They never paid their bounties.

If her family wasn't so desperate for the money, she'd have stayed on Brink, but an IMC grease-monkey was paid significantly more than a grease-monkey on Brink. Her father worked day and night to support Aisling's mother and his three children. Labour and lives were cheap on Brink. A pregnant woman could be replaced in an instant and the moment Aisling's mother's employees found out about her fourth child they'd fired her on the spot with a shrug and a sorry.

And thus, the moment Aisling heard the IMC were in Brink and were hiring – 30% now, 30% at the end and 40% along the way – she'd signed up for a voyage right away and written down her father's bank account details. Hopefully he could keep the family afloat until her arrival.

A screen on the wall of the cabin flickered and pulled Aisling back into reality. The words "Voyage briefing" appeared, then a face. Male, pale (almost albino) white skin. Brilliant green eyes, brown hair. Stubble on the chin, large nose. Not old enough to be a grandfather, but somehow with the wise look and trustworthy feel of one.

"Good afternoon, crew, I'm IMC captain Roberts," said the face, introducing itself. "This is a pre-recorded message being played to you the day our voyage begins, in each of your afternoons at 15:30. The _IMS Austraeus_ will be leaving port on Brink at 23:00, time local to the ship's computer, or 15:00 Brink local time. We will be warping from Brink to deep space, halfway between Brink of Sol 4 and Venice 3 of the Freeport system. The warp will take 1071 hours and we'll be accelerating the whole way by burning our main engines. When we're in deep space we'll be at our top speed - around 225 kilometres per second. We'll burn our auxiliary engines for 4.5 hours to accelerate us in the clockwise direction, and then another 4.5 hours to decelerate us. We'll come to a relative stop having turned 180 degrees, at which point we'll fire our main engines again to slow us down. After 1037 hours we'll keep our engines burning but also turn on our auxiliary engines. Our main and auxiliary engines will turn off 34 hours later and with any luck we'll have dropped out of warp and into orbit around Venice 3.

We'll then move into Venice 3's spaceport and unload our cargo. At that point, you're all welcome to see the sights at Venice 3 while our traders sell our goods and purchase cargo for us to freight home. That'll take about two weeks.

Following that we'll warp to Carlyle and refuel just enough to make a second warp to Demeter. At Demeter we'll completely refuel and warp all the way home.

So, welcome to the _IMS Austraeus_, your new home for the next 5760 hours. Some of you will have crewed her before. Those of you contractors who haven't, well, once again, welcome aboard. Obey your Commanding Officer's and keep an eye out for acceleration alerts and you'll do just fine. New crewmen, your IMC comrades have flown with us before and are trained in all the basic tasks around this ship. Feel free to ask anyone with an IMC blue armband for directions.

There are a few hazards out here in space. The IMS Austraeus is equipped to shield us from radiation and small asteroids. We've got our Auxiliary engines to dodge the larger space-rocks, but for the most part space is empty and we don't expect to find many. If we're attacked by pirates we can easily hold them off until we outrun them – our fuel tanks are _much_ bigger than theirs."

Space piracy wasn't practised so much in the core worlds – more so on the frontier. Because a large ship's warp drive warps space in front of it and behind it for a large distance smaller ships can drop in behind a larger ship and utilise the larger ship's warp drive's power. The larger ship typically has a larger fuel tank than the smaller ship and thus is capable of outrunning the smaller ship – but the smaller ship's thrusters are more efficient (less mass to accelerate) so, for a short time, the smaller ship has an advantage over the larger ship. Pirates used this tactic to catch up to and board larger ships. For this reason many ships had rear-facing cannons installed.

"We're not on a military voyage so we're not equipped to deal with _serious_ military incursions. If we come up against militia spacecraft we're calling for IMC support and legging it. We have a couple of Pilots and titans aboard but that's all we'll need. Venice 3 is as peaceful as it gets on the frontier.

That's all for the briefing, I'll see you all on Venice 3."

The centrifuges began to turn on the sides of the _Austraeus_, creating weak artificial gravity of a sort. It was better than the magnetic boots, at least.

A group of engineers called Aisling down to take a look at a panel on the warp drive before they left port, but it was easily fixed. Warp drives work in conjunction with the ship's thrusters to propel their ship at enormous speeds. They stockpile energy from the ship's fusion reactor in a flywheel and release it all at once, creating an artificial black hole in the centre of their warping arrays. The black hole – or, in the case of the _Austraeus's _legacy drive, the _eight _black _holes_ - bend space-time around them. By synchronising the creation of the holes, the gradual annihilation of them due to antimatter formation on their event horizons and the speeds at which they spun one could fold space in a line in front of a spaceship and unfold it behind the spaceship. While the _Austraeus's _thrusters would only take it up to 225,000 metres per second her warping array was capable of folding the space in front of her into four hundred thousandths' of it's original size – multiplying the_Austraeus's _top speed by four hundred thousand times to a total speed of 300 times the speed of light _and_ minimising the effects of relativity. Aisling simply bolted down the metal cover of an auxiliary radiation vent for the spacial warping array – nothing special or particularly crucial.

Just as Aisling was going to sleep – 'twas annoying having to fix the engineers' problem at what was (for her cabin) designated night-time – an alarm sounded.

Je'lai moaned, opening her eyes. "Acceleration alarm, brace."

"Bon Voyage," muttered Evans. " 'Ere we go agaen."

The _Austraeus's_ main thrusters fired and she began to leave orbit around Brink, accelerating toward Venice 3 – currently just a speck of light in the universe. A few moments later the space directly in front of the _Austraeus_ began to contract and she dove into the abyss.


	2. The Pilots

Holy hell, 91 people have viewed my shitty fanfic in three days?!  
>You guys have no idea how encouraging that it.<br>This is my first fanfic. As long as people want to read it, I'll continue to update. I still have a shit-ton of content for it that I'm proof reading at the moment, so expect recent updates. If you have any issues with my writing style - if I'm missing lots of capital letters or misspelling words lots, _please let me know._ I improve through criticism.

According to the traffic graph, most of you are from America and are used to the Imperial measurement system. I use the metric system, partially because I live in New Zealand and partially because I believe that it will be the measurement system of choice in the future, where this fanfic is set. Sorry!

Speaking of New Zealand, it's 2:37 AM right now. I'm going to go to sleep and do a more thorough check of the formatting in this chapter later.

One of my hobbies is to write, another is to play titanfall, another is to draw, badly. Here's Aisling:

www.

imgur

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com

/

70JRSAB

(you'll have to remove the spaces because I'm bloody tired right now and I cannot be bothered finding out how to make links work with fanfiction.)

Thanks,  
>~ Hyperbion<p>

* * *

><p>As warping objects travel faster than light by bending space perpendicular to their path, the only way to detect them before they hit you is, by pure chance, to have a camera or light sensor of some kind look directly at the warping object while within the object's warp field, thus detecting the light from the ship that traveled through the space the ship was warping. Large ships have longer warp fields that project our far in front of them and thus can be detected from further away. Light and heat radiating from a starship through normal space takes an age to travel anywhere in space, given the sheer distance between anything interesting in the dark void. Light travelling in the direction of this ship itself, much like the ship, takes a short-cut through space due to the ship's warp or jump drive compressing space ahead of the ship. As the effects of a ship's warp drive are strongest nearest to the ship, the light from the ship travels very fast as it leaves the ship and slows down to normal light speed as it moves away from the ship.<p>

This results in spaceships condensing their own thermal radiation in front of them. Any observer that happens to find itself staring down a warping ship will see an explosion of thermal radiation from the ship's engines – the faster and bigger the ship, the greater the flash of light. This flash is known as a warp signature and can serve as a warning of incoming spaceships.

500 hours into the voyage the _Austraeus _detected the warp signature of an object headed straight for the ship. The duration of the flash of light combined with the intensity of the light and the thickness of the tunnel of space the probe was warping in front of it allowed the warp specialists of the Austraeus to guess its approximate size, speed, and how long it had been travelling for – likely a communications probe. Such probes were built for faster-than-light communication and were essentially a small radio transmitter riding a three-ton nuclear rocket and microwarp drive toward the intended recipient of the message it carried.

Due to the speed of the probe and the _Austraeus's_ lack of energy shields she was forced to make a sudden dodge to the side to avoid having the object _punch through her hull._ It didn't matter in the end whether it was an emergency communications pod travelling at 0.99 times the speed of light or if it was a dreadnought (stupidly and illegally) cruising through intergalactic shipping routes – both ruin your day if they hit you.

The sudden acceleration of the dodge, however, broke things, things throughout the _Austraeus _that Aisling and the other mechanics had to fix. The main concern was a secondary Tritium manifold which took three Austraeus–days (78 hours) to fix during which the _Austraeus's _engines had to be shut down.

Aisling awoke one 'day' some 700 hours into the voyage, yawned, slipped out of her bunk, nearly tripped over Sophia (who, given that her bunk wasn't long enough to accommodate her legs and had to sleep with her feet poking out the end, had managed to slip out the end and onto the floor _without waking up_), pulled on her clothes, stumbled into the women's bathroom, showered in what the IMC crewmembers called 'recycled piss', had breakfast (washed down with some coffee-flavoured recycled piss), nodded at some of the crewmen who were working on a different time-zone and thus were about to go to bed in her cabin (to save space, twelve people shared a six-person cabin. Six people worked while the others slept), ran a few laps around the _Austraeus's _virtual running track, pulled a few chin-ups, and left for her morning's briefing.

"Afternoon, Aisling," her supervisor greeted. "Ready to repair a broken coffee machine?"

"Still morning for me, Dokes," she replied with a smile at their inside joke. It wasn't particularly funny, but it was part of their morning routine and helped make the 'day' go by a little faster.

"I've never fixed a coffee machine before. First time for everything, huh? Where is the bloody thing?"

"Well, that's just it. It's the _Pilots'_ coffee machine. Do you know where the Pilots' quarters are?"

Of course she did. Pilot gossip spread like the third interplanetary plague.

"I think so. I'll head there now."

* * *

><p>Half an hour later the door to the Pilot's quarters was opened.<br>"Oh, sorry," said a tall, bearded man, eyes widening slightly.

_One point eight metres tall, maybe? _thought Aisling.

His hair was dark black and cut short. His skin, slightly browned. _Probably from Earth. _

Then there were the prosthetic legs. Aisling could just make out the metal pistons and joints jutting out from under his three-quarter pants.

_I wonder what happened to them._

"You guys are superhuman and you can't even hear me knock for ten minutes?" asked Aisling, eyebrow raised.  
>"We heard you," said the man sheepishly, "but we thought you were a pilot. We don't let you in unless you do the secret doorknock."<br>Aisling giggled. "Secret doorknock? You serious?"  
>"Show her the secret doorknock, Daniek," called a pale white-skinned blonde woman reading a magazine on a couch. Her accent seemed to be french.<p>

"Right-o -"

The pilot named Daniek crouched and leapt upwards, twisted his hips and activated his magnetic boots just in time to have them catch on the ceiling. The whole manoeuvre looked impossible to Aisling, whose mouth went from a playful smirk to agape in the second it took for Daniek to execute it.

"You've got to knock upside-down," explained Daniek from the ceiling, "or stay outside until you've learnt to do the jump. Anyway, coffee machine. That'swhy you're here, right?"  
>" 'Parently you guys can't live without it."<p>

Danniek dropped from the roof and lead her to the machine. "Well, Jenni does like her coffee."  
>"Two stims and a sugar," called the blonde from the couch.<br>"Coffee machine's fixed?" asked a short man who'd just walked in from the Pilot's quarters. The man stood at just 1.6 metres tall and looked like he could shrug off a titan punch.

"Not yet," murmured Aisling. "Soon." She unscrewed the cover plates of the machine. "I've never fixed a coffee machine before. Lets see... coffee beans go in here..."

She followed the path the beans would take. They'd go through the grinder – which appears to be working, there's coffee grinds in the test coffee she just made – into a cup, get compressed by a metal plate – hold on, what's pushing the plate? No, the compressor is here, that's fine... Is the pressure right? If the ground beans are compressed too much, they could block the water flow – no, the dial says the pressure is right – is the dial wrong? The pressure readout controls the voltage of the motor that runs the compressor – no, the compressor is working – what about the water pressure and the backsplash valve?

All the while Aisling talked with Daniek. She'd guessed correctly, he'd grown up on Earth. Australian father, South African mother. Both separated, both insanely rich (like everyone else who lived on Earth). He'd joined the IMC to train as a soldier at age 16 after he'd "had enough of all the corporate bullshit". After scoring highly all-round in the tests new recruits ran and breaking the record for marksmanship the instructors took special interest in him and nominated him for training as a pilot. He'd emerged at age 20 as a fully-fledged pilot with average to high scores in everything. Following that he'd been deployed as a peacekeeper to the rioting cloud cities of Venus. Now at age 21 he was off to the frontier for the first time.

Meanwhile Aisling found the fault in the coffee machine. The water pressure of the coffee machine was too high and inconsistent due to a fault in the boiler, and a valve within the machine was broken. Water could pass into the cup containing the coffee grounds – and then the boiler pressure would drop and the water would shoot back up the pipe, carrying coffee grounds with it and sucking the filter cup upwards. The water would then trickle around the cup and emerge from the machine as a watery shot of coffee with coffee grounds inside it, instead of a smooth blend of creamy brown coffee.

A few turns of her screwdriver later and the boiler was out of the machine.

"Hold on a sec," she called, "I need to get a new boiler from the junkboxes. I'll be back in five."

"I'll race you," said Daniek. "It's been a while since I've practised my parkour anywhere other than War Games. Jenni, wanna come?"

"No thanks," Jenni replied, still engrossed in her magazine. "I'll be fine."  
>"She will," muttered Daniek to Aisling. "She's got the best War Games score out of all the Pilots aboard the ship."<p>

"War Games?"

"One of the modes of a pilot certification simulator... let me just grab my helmet."  
>"No way." Aisling broke into a sprint. "If this is a race, I'll need a head-start."<p>

She shoved open the door to the pilot's quarters, leapt forward, disengaged her mag-boots and hurtled down the corridor.

The _Austraeus_ was decelerating, so there was still _some_ 'gravity' pulling her down, but not nearly as much as with her magnetic boots on or within the centrifuge. The Austraeus was only decelerating at around 0.5 metres per second, so the 'gravity' she felt pulling her down was only a twentieth' of the core world Earth's and only a twenty-fifth' of Brink's gravity.

Her feet scraped against the floor. She tucked into a roll, hit the wall at the end of the corridor, pushed off around the corner. Flicked her hand out to slow her left side down and she turned toward the next corridor. She moved fast – the alleyways of Brink taught her to think on her feet. Evidently, not faster than Daniek.

She could hear the patter of his feet in the corridors behind her, making a much lighter sound than they should for a man of his size. She glanced behind her as she turned the next corner to see him _running along a wall_ a hundred metres behind her, jump-kit burning bright blue to keep him in the air. He probably wasn't even trying.

_I__'m racing __a bloody pilot, _Aisling thought. _There's no way I __can outrun him. All right_,_take this -!_

She ducked into an air vent and held her breath.

_He's a pilot. Bet'cha he doesn't know the way to the junkboxes. If I lose him here, I can sneak there through a different route._

Moments later she saw him sprint past her, helmet facing forward, looking and listening but not finding. She heard a soft thud as his feet hit the end of the corridor and he sprung off – away from her.

_Heh. Nailed it. _

She crept out of the alcove and tip-toed back down the corridor and hit her head on the roof jumping when Daniek tapped her on the shoulder.

"Ever heard of active sonar bursts?" he asked with a grin, removing his helmet.

"Fine, you got me," she laughed, and started to breathe again. "Junkboxes are this way."

"Hey, why's Jenni so quiet?" asked Aisling. "She just sat there reading. I'd thought you pilots would be more – y'know, lively. With all the fighting and shooting and shit."

"She had a rough past," replied Daniek thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"Well -" he sighed. "She grew up on Lawrence's Run."

Aisling's eyes widened, mouth opened agape.

"Is she -"

"Okay? She's fine, don't worry."

"How old was she?" Aisling asked, unbelieving.

"Five."

"Holy shit, six?! Fuck me! And you say she's _fine_? Did her parents make it out alive?"

"No..."  
>"I... don't know what to say."<br>He laughed a sad laugh. "Nobody does, Ms. Brand. Nobody does."

She found a spare boiler and they returned to the pilot's quarters in silence. Aisling knocked, realised she had to do the jump thing to actually get the door opened, tried twice, kicked the door in frustration, let Daniek knock, entered the room, and began installing the boiler.

Jenni looked up after a few minutes. "I appreciate the quiet, but you guys are a little... _too quiet._ What happened?"

"I told her. Sorry."  
>"Oh." She smiled weakly, nodded. "Okay. I – need to get over it."<br>Aisling waited a moment, then asked.

"Uhh, Jenni – if you don't mind me asking – how did you escape?"

Jenni closed her eyes. "I was six years old.

* * *

><p>The sky was deep black. Not black like a sheet of black paper nor black like rubber, nor black like a dark room. The sky was black, like a sponge soaking up all the light, the stars like candles in a wind, struggling to stay alight.<p>

Then the ground began to crack beneath Jenni's feet and she screamed. Her daddy gripped her tighter.

"Don't worry, sunshine. It's just a bad dream. We're all just going to wake up tomorrow and everything will be okay."  
>Her mummy was crying quietly, and Jenni knew why. Her daddy was fibbing.<p>

Nightmares happened in the night-time when she slept. Not while she was awake.

She could see the stars in the sky between her father's legs stretching and falling and she knew it was bad because _the sun was doing it too._

"Daddy," she whispered, tiny fingers clenched tight around his hand, "What's going on?"

She already knew, though. The world had gotten too close to the spot. That was bad, she knew that. Not even the stars liked the spot; they skirted around the edges. Daddy had told her long ago that really, the stars weren't skirting around the edge; only their light was. That the spot really was a star, just a really, really old one and that she didn't need to be afraid of it, as long as nothing got too close to the spot.

But it couldn't be a star. Stars are bright, and this one was dark.

And then the ground cracked again and she stopped worrying about the spot. The world was cracking, cracks forming and being filled over and over again when the ground fell into them. One crack began moving toward them and Jenni screamed and they ran and the ground behind them was gone and daddy said "LOOK!"

Because one light in the sky was still fine.

Her daddy grabbed her hand and mummy grabbed the other and they ran faster than they'd ever ran before towards the light.

The research building was broken from when the space-rock hit it. Her daddy put her on his shoulders and lifted her up to the roof of the building and did mummy. Her mummy stood on the roof next to Jenni and waved at the light until it started turning and then she helped Jenni's daddy up onto the roof.

And then Daddy was on the roof and there was a shuttle coming in to hover by the roof and the door opened and Daddy pushed Jenny inside and then the world flashed and Daddy and Mummy were gone."

* * *

><p>Jenni's eyes were bloodshot and wet with tears. "Excuse me," she said, dropping the magazine to the ground and lurching to her feet, "I haven't had a shower yet today. I – think I'm going to go take a shower."<p> 


	3. Home in one piece

Aisling fixed the coffee machine in silence, said goodbye to the Pilots and returned to her Dokes for more things to fix. She felt terrible; what Jenni had said had cut her deep.

She had a family on Brink. And while Brink wasn't even _close_ to any black holes, meteor strikes were still a very real possibility.

At 19:30 (time zone: -6) she made her way to the mess hall, found a seat next to Sophia of Helios and began eating a watery curry.  
>"Hey," whispered Sophia. "Heard you met the Pilots."<p>

"Well, just three of them, the others were asleep or training."

At this point Aisling realised that the entire mess hall had gone quiet.

"What?" shouted Aisling. "Yeah, I met the Pilots. Big deal! They're just... normal people, but faster."

"Heard you raced one," yelled a man on the other side of the hall.  
>"Yeah, damn straight I did!" she called back. "He beat me! What a surprise!"<p>

And suddenly the hall exploded with questions.  
>"What are they like?"<br>"What are their names?"  
>"Are there any female Pilots?"<br>"Is the guy cute?"  
>"How tall are they?"<br>"Was the Pilot you raced _really fast, _or just _kinda fast_?"  
>"Did you nick any stim?"<br>"Wait, Pilots _sleep?_"

"Oh, for fucks' sake people!" she roared. "Leave me alone!"

She threw the rest of her curry away and returned to her cabin for some peace and quiet but found none when Je'lai threw her against the wall. Evans stood above her as she struggled to her feet. Baxter and Street looked up with mild interest.

"H'eard ye met the Pilots to'day," snarled Je'lai.  
>"You jealous, Lai?" Aisling grunted, getting to her feet. "Yeah, I did. So what?"<br>"What ze fuck did you do to Jenni?" Evans growled, grabbing her collar.

_This is getting dangerous, _thought Aisling, taking deep breaths, heart starting to beat fast. Growing up on a planet with a thick atmosphere did her no favours.

"I didn't do jack fucking shit." Aisling pushed Evans away, breathed. "I asked where she was from, she got all sensitive. Happy?"  
>"Watch who you're pushing, <em>civilian. <em>Don't fuck with our pilots, we don't fuck with you. We clear?"  
>"You got a problem with civilians? Put 'em up and," <em>breath<em>, "I'll beat the shit out of ya."

Evans was in the process of putting her fists up when Baxter pulled her smart pistol out of its' holster.

"Oh, real," _breath_, "_brave _of you," muttered Aisling sarcastically. "Brought a gun to a fistfight," _breath_, "backin' up your mate." _Breath._  
>"<em>Y<em>_ou_ brought your fists to a gunfight," Baxter replied, fuming. "And I'm not here to back up either of you. You're both acting like children. Aisling, you're not under my jurisdiction but I suggest you drop this argument _now_. Evans, drop this argument _now_. You idiots are going to get along, is that clear?"

Evans rolled her eyes, gritted her teeth, and then forced a smile at Aisling. "I'm sorry for getting angry at you Aisling. I hope we can be friends."

Aisling rolled her eyes. "Whatever," _breath_. "Just don't give me flak for shit I didn't do." She dropped into her bunk, started to breathe normally again.

Then she wondered something. "Wait, how do you, know Jenni?"  
>"We trained with her," replied Baxter, putting her Smart Pistol back in its holster.<br>"Wait, you -"  
>"Yeah. We're pilot rejects," snorted Evans. "Sure you wanna settle that argument with your fists?"<p>

* * *

><p>Aisling left Baxter and friends alone for the rest of the journey. She got along alright with Sophia, who was slowly learning to control her voice in the thicker atmosphere. Turned out that Sophia had also signed up as a mechanic, and the two of them worked together on their assignments. The short girl from Brink and the tall girl from Helios.<p>

There were other mechanics aboard, too. Aisling recognised Nathan Marshall, a friend from Brink. He'd helped Aisling find the parts for her first Mech and helped her put it together. The guy was a year younger than her and a few centimetres shorter than her but packed an explosive personality to make up for his missing height. At the height of their friendship they'd stolen a portable fission reactor together. The job took four days (during which Aisling's parents got _very _worried) and involved sneaking into an STR shipyard.

Then there was the guy who insisted his real name was Bones but who everyone just called Bonerhead after he'd gotten his head stuck in a washing machine in the women's laundry. He _insisted_ he didn't know how he got there. When he was working and not goofing off he was fantastic with his wiring, designing circuit diagrams in his head on the fly. Aisling spent some time with him learning to hotwire mechs from long-range. They'd practised on a GM Drivermech, the standard non-combat mechs used for moving heavy objects. The trick was to overload its reactor, triggering its safety mechanisms and forcing the mech to boot into safe mode.

Sophia, she'd met before. Turned out she looked older than she actually was; the Helian was only 150 kilohours old. Only just old enough to travel aboard a starship. She'd left Helios on a spaceship bound for Brink, wanting to see the rest of the universe. Upon arrival she immediately wished she hadn't left Helios. She'd gotten light-headed stepping off the shuttle, and not just because of the thicker atmosphere; Brink was far bigger than she'd ever imagined. Half of her wanted to go home, half of her wanted to stay away and try get used to it to prove that she was an adult now. Knowing that, given the opportunity, she'd likely board a ship back to Helios, she decided to remove that temptation and signed up aboard the first starship voyage she could – which happened to be the _Austraeus's _voyage to the freeport system. Helios, being the small colony it was, didn't often have merchants stop by to sell goods and thus Sophia learned to fix mechanical faults with the tools and materials she could find.

John was a nuclear physicist, so he was qualified to repair the _Austraeus's _reactors and main engine.

Samantha was an engineer and mechanic and was thus in charge of _inventing_ things on the fly to solve whatever problems the _Austraeus _was experiencing, unlike the mechanics whose job was to fix existing machinery that broke in-transit. Aisling, Nathan, Sophia and Bonerhead were then tasked with making whatever she came up with.

Philip was a theoretical physicist and was thus in charge of maintaining the _Austraeus's_ particle shields and legacy drive.

Together they made up Hangar Q's repairs and maintenance team.

* * *

><p>The mid-flight turning commenced without a hitch. The <em>Austraeus<em> shut off it's warp drives for 10 hours and burned its auxiliary engines to start its turn before burning them again to slow and stop its turn. She'd been burning her main thrusters the whole journey and had managed to come to a top speed of 225 kilometres per second (300 times the speed of light, given that her legacy drive multiplied her speed by four hundred thousand times). Now that she was facing the reverse direction she begin burning her thrusters again, a move that would decelerate her to a stop by the end of her journey at Venice 3.

A few weeks later, the captain's face appeared on their cabin's screen for a pre-recorded message after dinner.

"Attention, crew, this is your captain speaking. We're a third of the way through our voyage to Venice 3 and we'll be flying past Demeter at 1300 hours tomorrow. Keep in mind that all of you are operating on different time zones, so for most of you we won't actually be passing Demeter at your midday. If you're scheduled to work then, I've arranged for you to take a short break at that time. If you're asleep feel free to wake up to see it and sleep in a little to make up for the lost sleep. We'll be switching off the warp drive due to the gravitational disturbance, so we'll be cruising by at a lazy 150 kilometres a second.

That was a joke, by the way – 150 kilometers a second is still way too fast for any of you to get any good pictures. Most military ships have smaller fuel tanks than this ol' bird. She was built for colonising, they were built for stopping to refuel at Demeter. If you stay with the IMC you'll see the fleet if you travel on a military ship bound for the frontier, but not today.

Otherwise, I'd like to thank you all for a fantastic voyage, you've all been excellent. This is Captain Roberts, out."

Aisling couldn't care much for some unfocused pictures of Demeter, so she took her sleep-in. She knew something was up when Sophia rushed in to wake her at 700 hours.  
>"Nghhh... what is it, Sophia?"<br>"Demeter! It... It's gone!" she half-whispered, half screamed.

Aisling yawned. "What do you mean, it's gone?" she asked while stretching.

Baxter rushed into the cabin. "Get your ass out of the bunk, Aisling, the shit's just hit the fan."

"Whaaa...?" she mumbled as the information screen flickered to life.

"ATTENTION ALL CREWMEMBERS! This is Captain Roberts speaking!" blared loudspeakers throughout the ship.

"As of 1300 hours today our optical sensors have determined that Demeter has been destroyed. We don't know how, we don't know why, we don't know who survived. All we know is that what was once a planet is now an asteroid field.

Our goals are as follows:

One, to inform IMC command on core world Poseidon that Demeter has been destroyed and that military ships jumping to Demeter will not be able to refuel,

Two, determine the cause of this calamity and if it is still a threat to us,  
>Three, to search for survivors and assist ongoing rescue efforts made by the locals, if any are taking place,<br>Four, to evacuate as many civilians as possible to nearby safe worlds, or to the core worlds if necessary. This includes the civilian members of our crew.

We are aborting our shipping mission as of now. We may still drop into orbit around Venice but we are not going to attempt to load the _Austraeus_ with goods from the frontier.

However unlikely it may be, there is a possibility this disaster may have been caused deliberately. Given that this may be the result of militant action the _IMS Austraeus _has now been reclassified as a class four IMC warship. I regretfully am forced to declare martial law over this warship. You are now all soldiers of the IMC until we get you back home, and if we all work together, that will happen as soon as possible.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am IMC Captain John Roberts. It has been an honour serving with you. I pray that we can all make it back home in one piece.

Roberts, out."

Aisling was now completely awake.


	4. The plan

Hiya everyone,  
>Chapter four, huh?!<br>I'll do some formatting work in a minute; I'm gonna play a few games of Titanfall for now.  
>I'm also doing a quick 3D-model mockup of the Austraeus which might be done in time for chapter five.<p>

Otherwise,  
>Happy reading!<p>

* * *

><p>The IMC regulars stayed somewhat calm, the civilian crew members flew into a state of panic and the officers on the bridge began making plans.<p>

"Good morning, afternoon, evening and night officers," greeted Captain Roberts as the senior crew members of the _Austraeus_ entered the bridge. He paced as he talked. "Apologies for waking those of you who are scheduled to be sleeping right now, but as you may have heard this is an important matter."

He heard the last of the officers taking their seat and turned to face them. His sensitive ears had earned him the nickname 'Psychic John', and now it was his eyes that stared deep into the souls of his crew members. The green seemed to glow under the blue lights of the bridge, a glow that contrasted his unusually pale skin.

"Demeter has been destroyed," he began. "We don't know what by, but there's nothing but asteroids where it should be. The IMC can't send ships with jump-drives into the frontier any more and the Militia will know this whether they destroyed Demeter or not. They'll likely have capitalized on this. Demeter may not be the only IMC base to have fallen on the frontier.

We need to inform the IMC command that military ships jumping to Demeter are going to be either stranded with no fuel or ambushed by terrorists. We need to evacuate the civilians in our crew. And if possible we should set up a beachhead at Demeter or outpost 207.

I've never been in this kind of situation before. If any of you have any ideas on what we should do, now's the time to make them heard."

The bridge was silent for a moment. The tactician saw a chance to speak.

"Permission to speak, Captain."

"Granted, Johnson."

"Well," said tactician Johnson. "What if we were the Militia? If I were the leader of the Militia, regardless of whether or not I'd caused the destruction of Demeter, I'd strike as soon as I knew Demeter had fallen. I'd hit every IMC base on the frontier because I'd know that there wouldn't be any reinforcements coming to save the IMC. And I'd attack each base from the side closest to Outpost 207."

"Why?" asked Nina Soryuu, chief of navigation. "You'd have to go the long way around each planet – or perfectly time your jumps to land just behind each base. What's the point?"

"Because I'd want to scare the IMC out of their bases, make them run. I'd do each base the same way – lots of shock and awe. I'd fill the sky with ships, make the clouds rain Titans. And the moment the IMC ran, I'd follow them with a couple of ships and move the rest of my fleet to perform the same tactics on the next IMC base. I'd chase the IMC away from outpost 207, systematically fire a few missiles to keep them on their toes – and the moment they run out of fuel I'd fire my railguns at them."  
>"Ah ha," chuckled Captain Roberts. "The Samson gambit."<p>

"Enlighten me," requested Soryuu.

"Newton's second law of physics – things will continue moving at their current speed unless an outside force acts on them," explained battle specialist Jack Ireton. "That means a well targeted orbital railgun can snipe a battleship from the other side of the galaxy, and that a ship that's out of fuel can't apply a force to itself and thus can't dodge well targeted orbital railgun snipes.

IMC captain Samson Jordans was fighting in the Titan wars against a Militia fleet much larger than his own, but with less fuel. He lured the fleet out into open space with a corvette that the militant forces thought was carrying secret intel. After leading them on a wild goose chase, the militia had to stop as they only had enough fuel and Tritium remaining to warp back to their refueling station. Samson knew when the army would run out of fuel and thus predicted their course home, ordering his railgun artillery in orbit around an IMC base to open fire on their course in such a way that the projectiles would arrive as the enemy was warping through the area. Sure enough the enemy forces _did_ attempt to warp home along the path Samson predicted, and because they'd only just left enough fuel to warp home they didn't have any spare to avoid the artillery fire. The enemy fleet commander, Vivian Shri'lek was forced to decide between dodging the shots - but crashing into the militia's refuelling station because she didn't have enough fuel to slow down - or taking the artillery fire. She chose the latter and her entire fleet was obliterated - by railguns four systems away, mind you.

Nowadays, The Samson gambit refers to any tactic relying on the enemy running out of fuel."

"Tactics the Militia would do well to utilize, considering that Demeter has fallen," added Roberts. "Johnson, you were saying?"

"Yes, Captain. I'd try and force the IMC forces to flee and waste their fuel reserves, and then train my artillery cannons at their position the moment they run dry."

"In that case," asked Soryuu, "are there _any_ IMC forces left on the frontier?"

"We don't know for certain," replied Johnson, "but if there are, they'll be at the last base to fall, Outpost 207.

It has the facilities to repair ships, fuel reserves to refuel ships, ammunition to resupply ships, and some enormous stationary defense cannons to take down any enemy ships that show up. Any ships with the capability to warp and commanders smart enough to order them to do so will have abandoned their posts and jumped to outpost 207. Geologists – how long has it been since Demeter was destroyed?"

A tall, thin man with a straggly beard answered. "Judging by the radiation from it's core, we'd estimate between 2000 – 3500 hours."

"Great," muttered Johnson. "If anything, the IMC will be holding off the Militia at outpost 207, and I'd say they're probably running low on supplies. If 207 falls, the Militia will _own_ the frontier. It'll be nigh on impossible for the IMC to take it back.

We have some unique opportunities. The Militia _doesn't know we're coming_. They have absolutely _no clue_ that we're here. They expect IMC ships to be holed up at outpost 207 or to be arriving fuel less at Demeter. Speaking of which, that's another thing I'd do if I were leading the Militia – set up an ambush at Demeter, or at least keep it under surveillance. We've just avoided any such ambushes.

We can inform IMC command at the core worlds that Demeter is destroyed. The Militia will be sniping comms probes the moment they leave outpost 207 – but we're not _at _outpost 207.

We can trade with the settlers of the frontier to acquire resources to resupply our allies at outpost 207 with. We can find food and small ammunition at Venice 3, Fuel at Carlyle. We might even be able to purchase frigates and destroyers and space-space ammunition from Kodi Industries on Sorian. If we warp into outpost 207 with all that we might be able to hold the militia off until reinforcements come from Poseidon.

"Sounds good," replied Roberts.

"For now, we'll adjust our current course and drop out of warp near Venice 3's star, Solvenice, instead and use it to slingshot us towards Venice 3. We'll arrive about 30 hours later but it'll look like we came from New Tokyo instead of the core worlds. From now until we arrive at Solvenice we should direct all crew members to disguising the _IMS Austraeus, _painting new identification marks, etcetera. She's one of the two largest ships in existence, both of which belong to the IMC – we'll stick out like a sore thumb otherwise. We can shorten her by removing one of our centrifuges and some of the empty fuel tanks – even if we only cut off a few hundred metres we can claim that we're merchants from New Tokyo. From now on, we should travel under a new name. Any ideas?"

Mission specialist Ashley Stone raised a hand. "The TKY _Shikinami_?"

"I like it," said Johnson, nodding his head. "From now on, we're the TKY _Shikinami_. Anyway, continuing with what I was saying;

When we arrive at Venice 3 we'll deploy five teams to the surface.

Team one will be spies, searching for information on what happened at Demeter, where the IMC is, where the Militia is, etcetera.

Team two will acquire four comms probes and deploy three - one to Demeter, to scan for Militia ambushes, one to outpost 207 to scan for IMC presence, and one to Poseidon to inform them of Demeter's destruction and of anything team one has learned. When we get a reply from the two scanning probes team two will deploy the fourth comms probe to Poseidon to tell them what the scanning probes found. Hopefully Venice 3 won't be sniping comms probes.

Team three will acquire a shuttle and warp to Carlyle, where they'll take over the refueling control stations.

Team four will acquire a shuttle and warp to the Kodi Industries factory on Sorian where they'll purchase or steal as many spaceships and as much ship-ship ammunition as possible. Frigates, destroyers – hell, cruisers if they can find them. _We will need them _if we are going to be any help to our comerades at outpost 207.

Team five will purchase food, ammunition, weapons, body armor. Titans, if any, are being sold at the markets. If the IMC is present at outpost 207, the militia will be laying siege to outpost 207. This means dropships, this means enemy grunts, spectres, pilots and titans on the ground trying to take out our ground-orbital cannons. We will need to defend them. When team five is finished, they'll return to the _Shikinami_.

In addition, we'll allow all of our civilian crew members to leave our service and take refuge on Venice 3. We'll pay them everything they're due and tell them how to get a transport home. Even if we are destroyed at least the IMC's image will improve among the core worlds. 'We take care of our crew' is a good message for people to hear. We'll also offer to double the pay of any crew member who stays with us – because we'll be in need of crew.

As soon as team three has captured Carlyle's refueling controls we'll drop into orbit around Carlyle and suck the planet dry. I'm almost certain that there will be IMC ships at outpost 207 and they _will need fuel_. We will take as much as we can carry, team three will jump aboard.

After Carlyle we'll warp to Sorian quickly to meet up with team four. We'll then warp to outpost 207, team four will follow within our warp distortion. Team one and team two will purchase a shuttle on Venice 3 and warp to outpost 207 such that we arrive at the same time.

On the off-chance that teams one and two find that there are no IMC ships at all on the Frontier all teams will abort their missions and return to the _Shikinami _except for team three. The _Shikinami _will warp to Carlyle, we'll suck Carlyle dry and warp home.

Sound good?"

"Why do we have to steal fuel from Carlyle?" asked someone.  
>"They're a tiny refueling station and refueling a superfreighter like us would take almost everything they've got. That's bad for their business, they don't want to have to turn away other customers. Gives them a bad reputation. <em>Usually<em> we'd just buy enough fuel for a warp to Demeter, but today's not a usual day."

"I like the plan," mused Captain Roberts. "Johnson, I want you to put together a scenario. Run your simulations, do everything it takes to get this plan prepared. Tell me when you're done. Ms. Soryuu, set a course for Venice 3 that orbits Solvenice first. Thorick, tell the engineers, the builders, the architects, the grease-monkeys – hell, tell everyone you can to start disguising the _IMS Austraeus_. We've got to _become_ the _Shikinami_ as soon as possible. Ms. Stone, put together the five teams and command centres for each one. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be frank.

We're outnumbered. Out gunned. Totally unprepared – hell, it's a miracle we're got all the spare frontier cash we're carrying, I don't know what we'd use to trade without it. But we're here, and the Militia don't know it. If we pull this off, we just saved the Frontier, and drinks are on me. Lets get to work."


	5. The Titans

**Note: Outpost 207, based on the lore in the actual game, may refer to _just _the base we play on, _or_ the entire moon. In this fanfiction, "outpost 207" refers to the entire moon. Thus, Tactician Johnson believes that the IMC will have fallen back to the _moon _and will have control over it. The IMC isn't _so_ screwed that they can only control the buildings in the map we play on in Titanfall.**

* * *

><p>"Detonating the primary charges!" called Sophia through the radio in her helmet. "Three! Two! One! MARK!"<p>

Two hundred high-explosive charges detonated simultaneously in the supports of the rear centrifuge. A millisecond later the alloy surrounding the charges turned to molten slag, and with no oxygen in space for it to react with, it just formed into balls of red-hot metal and floated away. Some of the balls bounced off the end of the ship, the light borium armour insulating the _Austraeus _from the molten alloy's heat.

Aisling and the rest of the mechanics and engineers had undone most of the bolts securing the enormous composite ring to the ship – well, they had help. Five all-purpose industrial mechs floated with the engineers around the Austraeus's hull.

"Firing the secondary charges!" called Aisling. "Standby for centrifuge detachment! Three! Two! One! MARK!"

A set of smaller charges detonated on the bow-side of the centrifuge ring, pushing it free of the ship and into space in front of the _Austraeus, _and it slowly drifted ahead. Like the Austraeus it was still travelling ridiculously fast towards Solvenice – 139 kilometres per second, to be precise – but _unlike_ the Austraeus, it didn't have a nuclear engine to steer it away from the sun or slow it down to orbital speeds. With any luck nobody would ever know that the _Austraeus – _or rather, the _TKY Shikinami_, according to the fresh stencilling on her hull – ever had a second centrifuge.

A man drifted toward Aisling, jetpack flaring to slow him down.

"Hows it going, Aisling?" he asked.  
><em>That's Daniek's voice,<em> thought Aisling.  
>"Alright," she replied. "It took us a while, but we finally got the centrifuge off. She's looking different already, huh?"<p>

Daniek's jetpack fired again and he started to drift away from the _Austraeus_, taking it all in.

"Not bad, although the centrifuge bay could do with some cleaning up."  
>"Yeah, I'll file down the edges of the mount with one of the mechs later."<p>

"Wait, you can pilot a mech?" asked Daniek, surprised.

"Yeah, we used them back on Brink for large scale jobs. Its a lot easier to stick the barrel on a tank when you're one and a half stories tall. But those mechs are easy to operate. You've got a much harder job."

"Heh," laughed Daniek. "Well, titans aren't _thaaat_ hard to pilot. It's more the fact that there are other people trying to beat yours that makes it hard. Speaking of which, when you're done with the _Austraeus_, could you take a look at my Atlas? I think the reactor's playing up."

"Wait, you think you might be deployed?" asked Aisling, shocked. "I thought we were just -"

"Plans have changed. The Captain's been in the briefing room for hours and the Pilots," he pointed to himself with his thumb, "have just gotten a look at our orders. Yeah, we might get deployed. But dropping the Titans? Unlikely. Roberts wants a couple of teams in plain clothes on the ground to buy some shuttles, that's all."

"Oh, okay. Better safe than sorry with your Titan, though. I'll be done in a couple of hours, where's your titan stored?"

"Bay four."  
>"Okay, see you there."<p>

* * *

><p>"Good news," greeted Daniek as Aisling drifted into the Titan hangar. "You're off the hull conversion team."<p>

"What do you mean?" asked Aisling, confused. Hull conversion was top priority; the _Austraeus_ had to be disguised as soon as possible. "We've only just removed the rear centrifuge."

"Well, remember those orders the Pilots just got?"

"You mentioned them..."

"The Captain wants Titans fully prepped and ready to drop at a moment's notice, and we've decided we want you to lead the prep team."

Aisling gave him a confused look. "I've never even seen a Titan before. Well, not a real one, anyway."

"Neither has any other mechanic aboard this ship. Hell, we'd never even considered deploying the Titans when planning this voyage. And you seem to be able to figure out how things work. You'd never fixed a coffee machine before yesterday, right?"

"Yeah, but I understood vaguely how a coffee machine works," protested Aisling as Daniek took her by the arm and gave her a gentle push towards the Titan bay – a push that resulted in Aisling drifting a full 20 metres. He leapt after her as she rolled through the air.

"You mentioned a few hours ago that you'd operated mechs before," countered Daniek with a grin. "What kind of mechs?"  
>"Uhh... GM Drivermechs, an Exia, a Dynames -" she counted. "Bonerhead would be much better at this! He knows how they operate, hell, he can hotwire a mech!"<p>

"Then get him on the team!" Daniek said as Aisling's feet made contact with the ground.

"I'm saying he should be the leader _of_ the team!" she protested as he landed in front of her.

Daniek grabbed her shoulders, turned her to face -

A Titan.

An enormous hulking mass of metal and plastic and carbon fibre.

It took the breath out of her small lungs.

It stood at around 4.5 metres tall. Its feet the size of an automobile's wheels, two toes like enormous pincers grasping the ground. Ankles popping backwards unnaturally to serve as suspension, supported by twin electromagnetic rams. Lower legs angled forward, plated thick with Borium, electrical wiring snaking between the armour and fluid compressors like veins. Knees as thick as oil barrels, connected to the upper legs by thick metal bracing. Behind each knee lay a hydraulic ram, holding the Titan up.

Its hips were an enormous curved hunk of solid metal, protecting a small portable fusion reactor. Its body was plated with more Borium, supported by yet more electromagnetic rams, entry door held open to reveal the cockpit. Plated with the thickest armour the titan had, enough to allow someone inside to temporarily forget the world around them. The seat was in the middle, atop a small hill of explosives capable of shooting the pilot 300 metres straight up. Behind its rear armour sat a pair of rockets,

A hole in the top of the cockpit the width of the chair penetrated through the Titan's broad shoulders, on which were mounted hydraulic-driven arms each the size of a battering ram.

Then its head. A port for cameras and sensors, set in its shoulders, just above its chest.

Shaped like a man – well, just like any other mech – but built like a tank. Not for comfort, nor suspension. For speed, durability, and sheer strength. This was not a skeletal GM Drivermech, nor a cheap battlemech. This was -

"A Titan," said Daniek, interrupting Aisling's thoughts. "It doesn't matter how it's done, I need her ready to wreck shit if the shit hits the fan on the ground." He turned to face her, his gaze piercing. "Can you do it for me?"

"Okay... I'll see what I can do."  
>"Thanks Aisling. Means a lot to me."<p>

She glanced at him. He was still looking up at the Titan.

This was his machine, his tool. Aisling knew how much she hated being without her spanner and induction screwdriver; did Daniek get the same feeling when he was away from his Titan?

_He must trust me a lot to let me do repairs on his Titan._

"Well, I'll put together a team now. What exactly is wrong with it?"  
>"She needs her joints to be oiled, ammunition refilled, hydraulic fluid topped up... all of which I can and will do myself. The real problem is that her right arm got hit by a shipping container while we turned around to slow down. That's what I'm worried about – arm needs to be bolted back onto her shoulder, wiring re-soldered, hydraulics reconnected, weapons integration system recalibrated. Once you're done with that, Jenni needs you to take a look at her Stryder. Bruce was doing some customization to his Ogre, and needs the outer armour welded back on. Jaggerjack wants his Atlas rockets refuelled – or wait, was it George... hell, refill all the rockets. Misha needs her reactor repaired or replaced, Rimjob wants -"<br>"_Rimjob? _Who the hell is _Rimjob?!_" laughed Aisling.

"Ugh... long story, but I can assure you that no rim-jobs were given or received in the assignment of his nickname."

Aisling smirked. "Whatever. Can you tell them to write down their requests or come see me about them?"

"Sure. How long do you think it'll take?"  
>"Well, you've just listed six pilots... how many do we have aboard the Austraeus?"<p>

"Fourteen."

"Hmmm... yours will take, maybe six hours," Aisling counted on her fingers, "Bruce'll take three, assuming he finished the internal work, refuelling will take half an hour. Misha's reactor will take a day to replace, so, thirteen hours there... if four of you takes 22.5 hours, the fourteen of you should take... 70-80 hours of work. But we have to sleep as well... six days?"

"Ok, fair enough." He nodded. "I'll get the pilots to come down and let you know what they want done. Once again, thanks a million Aisling. You might just save our lives yet."

She smiled slightly, looked down at the floor. "Get some sleep, then. If you're going planetside, you'll need it."

"Sleep?" he looked at her as if she'd said something weird. "We're _pilots, _Aisling. We don't need _sleep, _just stim."

She raised an eyebrow and he laughed. "Alright, I will. See you later, 'ling."

He leapt towards the doors of the Titan bay and she turned and hid her face.

'Ling was her parents' pet name for her. She hadn't expected to be called something cutesy like that on this voyage.

_Am I blushing?!_

_Get a grip, Aisling, _she thought, before leaping at the intercom mounted on the wall. "Sophia? Can you come to the Titan bay? Okay, come as soon as possible. I'll explain when you get here, see you soon."


	6. The teams

Do people still read this D:

* * *

><p><em>I need to come up with five teams for the missions on the ground. What kind of people do we need? Hell, what kind of people do we have?<em>

_Team one are spies. We don't need them to be armed, or particularly skilled – gossip about IMC remnants may be common gossip on the streets. One Pilot to supervise the others, maybe ten of our soldiers, and a couple of our traders to help teach the soldiers to blend in?_

_Then there's team two, who have to acquire probes, launch them sneakily, and then hideout till extraction. That's obvious; I'll find four of our soldiers who trained in guerrilla warfare for team two._

_Team three is going to be taking over a refueling station. As much as I'd like to send an army and have a battle of attrition, we don't have that many troops. We'll need multiple pilots, a large force of soldiers and a hacker or two, maybe even a couple of mechanics or engineers._

_Team four – oh dear fuck, team four. I'd prefer to purchase the ships from Kodai industries, but if anything goes sour and they find out we might be IMC they'll close up shop instantly. Worst case scenario we'll have to steal the ships. We'll need mechanics, grease-monkeys, engineers, hackers, and a small army to defend them. Hell, we're going to be needing a small army to fly all those ships to outpost 207. It might be worth getting an AI to pilot those ships instead of training all of our soldiers – the basic starship operation course just isn't going to cut it here. _

_Finally there's team five. They're going shopping. To be honest I think we should split team five in half – team 5A, made almost entirely of traders with a Pilot and soldier or two mixed in, for buying innocent goods like food and ammunition, and team 5B, with one trader and a couple of our mercenaries and Pilots for purchasing the body armor, guns and Titans. _

_And then there's the issue of extraction. I think its almost impossible for us to NOT blow our cover at some point in these missions – wait, it doesn't actually matter if we do! We're warping to Carlyle after this and then to outpost 207, we'll be blowing our cover anyway. What if we do a hotzone extract? We could have teams one, two and five all meet at one point, drop the Titans and an extraction dropshi – shit, we need to get the Titans out of there, it's not like we have many spares. _

She stood up, left the cabin and poked her head into the women's bathroom. "Dokes?"  
>"Yo?" the African-American woman was in her pajamas, toothbrush in mouth.<p>

"Know of any good Mechanics aboard the ship?"

"Not off the top of my head, no..."

She looked at her communicator. "Let me check with Overwatch," she muttered, entering a command to the _Austraeus's _AI with one hand, brushing her teeth with the other. "What do you a mechanic for?"

Ashley grimaced. "We need a mechanic for the strike team on Sorian. We're going to _try_ purchase the ships from Kodai industries, but if worst comes to worse we might just have to steal them. If that happens I want to have a mechanic on the ground."  
>"Fair enough. In that case, Bones Deen says he can hotwire a ship..."<br>"Can we confirm that? I need to be sure I can rely on him if the shit hits the fan."

"I'll give him a test later. Anything else?"

"Yeah, we'll need to support the Titans on Sorian. Is Deen any good with a battlemech?"

"Well... Ms. Brand might be better at that. She's working Titan maintenance right now."

"She can repair a Titan? Confirmed?"  
>"She <em>seems<em> to be doing an alright job of it..."

"Where can I meet them?"  
>Dokes spat the toothpaste into the sink and turned on the tap, (some sorry excuse for) water slowly floating into the sink due to the low gravity. "Let me check both their schedules. Lets see... Oh, Brand and Deen are working in the Titan hangar tomorrow at central time 300 hours."<p>

"Thanks a million, Dokes. How's the hull conversion coming along?"  
>Dokes smiled. "Slowly, but we'll be done by the time we hit Solvenice's probe field."<p>

Most colonized planets deploy a cloud of warp signature detector drones in a ring in high orbit around their star. The drones are usually programmed to scan for incoming warp signatures 24/7. If a drone discovers an incoming warp signature, they interface with their neighbor probes to ensure that only one drone sends a comms probe back to the colonized planet, warning the planet that there is a starship arriving at the star system.

Ashley nodded, smiled. "Great. I'll be glad to just get off the frontier alive."  
>"I know what you mean."<p>

* * *

><p>Aisling awoke, went through her morning routine and reported to the Titan hangar to finish up the repairs to Misha's Ogre – and found five people waiting for her. The first she recognized; it was Dokes, then there was Nathan, Sophia and Bonerhead – but the fifth; she'd never seen before. T'was a tall dark-haired woman wearing IMC bridge uniform. Sunglasses covered her eyes.<p>

" 'Afternoon, Aisling," Dokes greeted cheerfully.  
>"Still morning for me, Dokes," Aisling replied carefully. "Who are you?" she asked the other woman carefully.<p>

"Mission specialist Ashley Stone," introduced the woman. "I see you're good with the Titans."

"Well, I'd be nothing without my team."  
>"Here's the thing, Aisling," said Stone, looking her in the eye, "We've planned for five teams to land on Venice 3 to perform a series of tasks – spying, collecting supplies, et cetera. We're going to need some mechanics to go planetside, and, given the possibility of titan deployment, your team are the perfect people to do it. In short, we'd like to put you through a three-month basic combat training course over the next three weeks and deploy you, Nathan, Sophia and Bonerhead with infantry escorts to Venice 3. Do you accept?"<p>

Aisling opened her mouth, closed it, then said, "let me think about that for a moment. Wait, no. Tell me more about what I'd be doing on Venice 3."  
>"We need to send six mechanics to Venice 3. Two will take a shuttle to Carlyle with a platoon of spec-ops soldiers to take over a refueling port. The other four will take a shuttle to Sorian and inspect the ships we're going to purchase from Kodai industries before networking them with Overwatch. If necessary, we may need the mechanics on Sorian to steal the ships instead."<p>

"Well. So, not the usual kind a' grease-monkeying."  
>"No. Not at all." Stone removed her sunglasses. "Your team is the best we've got. If we're going to have any chance of this mission succeeding, we need your help."<p>

The five looked at her, waiting for a response.

"Oh, fuck it," muttered Aisling. "But, in exchange, I want you to promise me something. Two things, in fact."  
>"Go on."<br>"First, that all civilians deployed to Carlyle and Sorian will be protected by IMC soldiers and pilots at all times. Hell, I want Titans ready to be deployed."  
>"Of course."<p>

"Second, I want to change my payment contract. In the event of my death, I want the IMC to look after my family. I came on this voyage to support my parents and my siblings. If I die, I want my pay doubled and sent to them _immediately_."

"Let me check if I can do that." Stone turned around, placed her communicator by her ear. "Overwatch, I'd like to make a change to Aisling Brand's contract. Patch me through to the legal team."

A few seconds later, she turned to face Aisling again.  
>"We can try. Your initial contract is being stored on Brink. If you die but the <em>Austraeus<em> returns to the frontier or is in a position to send a comms probe to the core worlds, we'll include make the changes to your contract, but you must understand that if the _Austraeus_ is destroyed and the IMC defeated, we may not be able to change your contract."  
>"I understand and accept, as long as the <em>Austraeus <em>makes every effort to honour this."  
>"Very well. Then, you will join the strike team?"<p>

"If I do, will the IMC be able to evacuate the civilian members of her crew home to Brink sooner?"  
>"I believe so, yes."<br>"Then I'm in."

Nathan smiled at her, raised an eye. "I didn't believe for a second you wouldn't, Ling."

_There it is again_, thought Aisling.

"I shall go too!" roared Sophia, perhaps slightly louder than she intended.  
>"Aw, fook 'et," muttered Bonerhead. " 'If to' gurls are goin', es' not leik I can' jus' sit out. Coount me in."<p>

"Excellent," said Stone with a smile. "When will you be finished preparing the Titans?"  
>"By the end of tonight."<br>"Then report to Battle Specialist Jack Ireton at hangar D tomorrow at Central time 1100 hours. Will that be okay?"  
>Aisling chuckled. "That's 1700 hours for us, Ms. Stone. We could have a sleep in."<p> 


	7. She didn't actually want to die

2091 hours into its voyage, dots began appearing on the _Austraeus's_ Long Range Detection systems.

"Warp signiature detector drones located!" called the LRD operator.

"As expected," muttered Captain Roberts to himself as he paced the Bridge. "Begin broadcasting prepared radio chatter, along with our specifications."  
>"The faked specs, for the <em>TKY Shikinami?<em>" asked the chief of communications.  
>"Indeed."<p>

"Broadcasting radio chatter."

The _IMS Austraeus_ began to broadcast the usual identification that all ships send when entering a star system, with a few lies mixed in with the truth.

* * *

><p><em>TKY Shikinami<br>__Designation: New Tokyo Superfreighter  
><em>_Assembled 2094  
><em>_Length: 3212 metres  
><em>_Height: 603 metres  
><em>_Width: 603 metres  
><em>_Mass: 183 million tons  
><em>_Maximum acceleration: 0.6742 metres per second (Large NFu Mass Driver MN02342123)  
><em>_Warp drive compression: 20,000 times (General Physics Incorporated MN0253)_

* * *

><p>The faked identification information had been planned over the last month to generate the least possible suspicion about the <em>IMS Austraeus's <em>true agenda.

"Sir, Warp signiature detection drones are giving us a yield signal. They're going to make way for us."  
>"Excellent." Roberts continued to pace. "Whats our distance from Solvenice?"<p>

"Overwatch says 4400000 kilometres, Sir," called Nina Soryuu.

"Speed?"  
>"2.4 kilometres per second, Sir."<p>

"Deceleration?"  
>"We're burning our engines at 0.6742 metres per second squared, Sir. Overwatch is telling me that's too much and that the engines are overheating, but it's wrong. We can decellerate faster than usual because we lost some mass disguising the <em>Austraeus's <em>hull."

"Okay then, time till orbital burns?"

"Sixty hours, Sir."

"Very well. Notify the crew that we'll be slingshotting around Solvenice in sixty hours, and – what, arriving in orbit around Venice 3 in a ninety?"  
>"Yes, Sir," Soryuu answered. "I'll notify the crew now."<br>"Hold on – Ms. Soryuu, where are you from?"  
>"Sir? Poseidon. Why -"<p>

"Ethnicity?"  
>"Japanese. Sir, why do you -"<p>

"Ms. Soryuu." Roberts gazed deep into her eyes. "When we arrive in orbit around Venice 3, the traders are going to shit themselves with excitement. We are one hell of a big ship, and they'll be expecting to sell their merchandise like never before. They'll want to get cosy with the captain, make our acquaintance. Don't you think they'll be slightly suspicious if they find, well, a pasty white european commanding a ship coming from New Tokyo, a japanese settlement?"

Roberts waited a second before continuing. "My point is, Soryuu, we need someone Japanese to pretend to be the captain. You're the chief of Navigation. You're a leader – albeit, of a smaller team, but still. You've spent a lot of time at the bridge of this ship. And you're Japanese. If you pretend to be captain, we might just fool these guys."

"Sir. I... well, this..." she mumbled, surprised and shocked.

"Please, Ms. Soryuu," he pleaded, bowing his head low. "Will you pretend to be our captain?"

She heard herself saying "Yes, Sir."

"Thank you, Ms. Soryuu," he said solemnly. "Overwatch, inform the uniform store that - aw, hell. Overwatch, inform general supplies to begin fabricating New Tokyo uniforms for everyone aboard this ship, starting with the people most likely to be seen by the Venice public. In addition, we'll need a captain's uniform for Ms. Nina Soryuu and a vice-captain uniform for myself. Use the sizes listed in our personal files."

He turned to Nina. "_Captain,_" he said, with the slightest hint of a smile on his lips, "I'd like you to address the crew. Tell them that you are going to be pretending to be captain. In addition, inform them that they need to change out of their New Tokyo uniforms into plainclothes, until their New Tokyo uniforms arrive."

"Yes, Si- I mean, Vice-Captain Roberts," she replied.

* * *

><p>Sweat poured down her face and bullets whistled past her right air as Aisling ducked behind a building.<p>

"Com oon out, lassie!" roared Bonerhead from behind the building. "Wher ayre yeh?"

_Bullshit he doesn't know I am, _thought Aisling. _He can probably hear my heart beat._

A soldier – or grunt, as command tended to call them – rounded the corner. "I found he-" he yelled excitedly before a bullet from Aisling's suppressed Smart Pistol made a neat hole in his head.  
><em>Shit, now Bonerhead knows where I am. I gotta move!<em>

She reached into her utility pouch, found an Arc grenade. The last she had left. She squeezed the handles on the grenade together, noted the "click!" that emanated from within, jumped out from behind cover, lobbed it at where she thought Bonerhead might be, and sprinted toward the next building. Tugged at the door handle, pulled it open. Punched the grunt inside with her left hand, pistol-whipped him with her right before pulling the Smart Pistol to her eyes and launching a shot through his grey matter. She sprinted up the stairs of the building, observed the visual artefacts that indicated that yes, this was just a simulation, and that yes, stubbing your toe on the top stair still hurt like a bitch.

She stumbled onto the balcony, trying to ignore her toe, pulled the Smart Pistol to her eye to try locate her foe. Lines flicked across her visor, indicating that the pistol had locked onto enemy troops and she fired. Somewhere inside the _Austraeus's_ computer, four processes had just been terminated.

But not her. She was still 'alive', as were Nathan, Bonerhead and around twenty soldiers all trying to use the skills they'd learnt over the past two weeks to improve their chance of success if they ever ended up in a _real_ combat situation. This was the final test – a 70 hour long Free-For-All combat simulation in a virtual city, fighting against each other and increasingly large waves of computer-controlled infantry. They'd been told they were not expected to survive to the end, that this was designed to see _how long they could last_, not _if_ they could last. The simulation had started out easy enough – just a few unorganised computer-controlled grunts scattered here and there – but now they were more organised.

The fifty trainees had started out in a dropship that began to drop each person off at random points in the city. The ship was filled with all sorts of trainees – a few civilians (Aisling, Nathan, Sophia, Bonerhead, John the nuclear physicist) – and a few IMC soldiers who were simply trying to step up their game. Evans had given her a nasty grin, pointed to her own eyes and then Aisling's as if to say _you're mine, bitch,_ before backflipping out of the dropship. Aisling got set down in a park surrounded by tall metal buildings.

She and the other civilians got the expensive Smart Pistols, the fast-track way to victory in combat. The soldiers were being trained with R-101 carbines and EVA-8 shotguns – more difficult to master, but more efficient on the battlefield.

_As well as, like, a gazillion times cheaper._ Packing an AI into the space of a pistol capable of calculating targeting vectors in real time was no small feat. Someone had told Aisling that the newer models would do calculus now.

The thing that Aisling hated about the Free-For-All was that _everyone_ was out to kill her. The other trainees were out for her blood – Evans especially – and the computer-controlled soldiers worked as a team to track down everyone, gradually growing in numbers until survival was impossible. All Aisling wanted was a place to sleep and now Bonerhead had trapped her. There would be no sleep until she'd escaped, killed him or been killed.

_Lets hope he gets shot by an NPC spectre_, thought Aisling. She peered out the window. A three-man NPC grunt patrol was coming down the street, systematically kicking down the doors to each house and leaping inside to shower the unfortunate occupants with shotgun pellets.

She decided to solve this problem like all problems – look at the problem, look at her resources, find a way to connect the two. In this situation, being calm would be her ally.

First, the smart pistol.

Second, the spanner she'd found in a garage.

Third, and should have been listed second, the ammunition for the smart pistol.

Fourth, a crowbar.

Fifth, the bookshelf and the books on it.

Sixth, the length of rope in the corner.

Seventh, a shotgun and three shells she'd picked up off a dead grunt back when it was still safe to be on the streets.|

Eighth, the windows and the blinds that covered them.

And so, she worked.

Extracted the shotgun shells from the shotgun, bent the floorboards out of the floor with the crowbar. Out came three nails. She shot the drawcords of the curtains with her silenced Smart Pistol, tied the shotgun shells to the nails. A stack of books came off the bookcase and were placed in the gap under the floor. The nails with the shotgun shells on them went on the books, and the floorboards went back on top – jutting out a centimetre higher than before. She stepped back, admired her handiwork, and relieved herself in the bathroom. Washed her hands, threw 'water' over her face, shook her hair out. Even in war, there was no shortage of recycled piss.

_I need a haircut. And shit, do I really look like that?_

She rubbed the dirt out from under her eyes – habitual, given her Brink childhood – and realised that her eyes were black from a lack of sleep.

_These simulators are bloody realistic._

_Wait, how did I drink that water?_

When taking a simulator for an extended period of time, the user would enter the simulator naked, bar a pair of VR goggles, a series of electrodes, a breathing mask and a cup around the user's genitals, in case they did need to 'relieve themselves'.

_Perhaps the water came through my breathing mask?_

There was a bang at the door as one of the grunts kicked down the door, a second bang as the door landed on the floorboards, pushing the bullets down on the nails and firing them upward, and a "Shit, it's boobytrapped!" as the computer-controlled grunt patrol realised what had just happened and immediately switched to their "cautious" subroutine. Aisling's palm hit her face, she was well and truly screwed now. There was a third bang – probably a shotgun blast into a wall, to check if anyone was behind. Then quiet.

Aisling slowly inched towards the bathroom door, smart pistol in hand.

_Fuck it. If I die here, I get to leave the simulator and get a decent night's sleep. And a meal. Fuck yes, a meal. And a shower. And a proper toilet! Holy hell, real life is heaven!_

She stopped at the edge of the door, closed her eyes, counted to ten, and leapt out the door to find herself staring down the barrel of a shotgun before realising that she didn't actually want to die.


	8. The briefing

This chapter is huge. Sorry. I promised I'd have the _Austraeus / Shikinami_ at Venice 3 by chapter 8, so I had to write a lot to keep my promise :D

Anyway, review, critique, and enjoy! Knowing that people are reading this keeps me writing it. You can reach me on reddit at u/akucera .

Also, a note. A 'Squad' is a team of four to eight soldiers. A platoon is fifteen to thirty soldiers.

* * *

><p>There was a moment of stunned silence.<p>

"Truce?" she asked hopefully.  
>"Sure," Nathan replied, and she dropped to her knees in relief.<p>

"Bonerhead's somewhere out there," she whispered, motioning to the buildings.  
>"I know," he whispered back. "Wanna go take him out?"<p>

Her eyes widened slightly, mouth opened into a disbelieving smile. "He'll _destroy_ us!"

"_W__e've got Smart Pistols_." Nathan motioned to his, pointed it to his eye. "If we_ both_ lock onto him we can kill him _faster_ than he can lock onto us! Worst case scenario, one of us dies and the other kills Bonerhead."  
>"Okay then. We have to find him first, though."<p>

A bang resounded from somewhere about two streets away. Perhaps Bonerhead was waiting there.

Nathan motioned towards the door and Aisling nodded. Nathan moved slowly down the staircase with Aisling covering his rear, their red armbands indicating that for this simulation they were on the same team.

They reached first floor of the building scanned the street through the door-frame. Aisling could hear... _something, _outside. Perhaps bonerhead could be waiting around this corner. Aisling knelt on the ground, watched the fingers on Nathan's left hand.

Three fingers outstretched

Two fingers outstretched

One index finger

They ducked around the door-frame and raised their pistols as one.

* * *

><p>The 'dead' players stood in a line in front of a wide display screen.<p>

"John," said Jack Ireton, battle specialist and their coach, eyebrows raised, "I'm surprised and a little disappointed."  
>"Sir?" the nuclear physicist asked.<p>

"I mean, that frag was perfectly placed. _Perfectly._"

The soldier who'd been killed by it couldn't help but agree. That didn't stop her from giving John dirty looks, though.  
>"And then you just had to go and trip over your own feet and get caught in the blast. Did you play any sport when you were a kid?"<br>"Yes, Sir. Long-bat-ball."  
>"They call it Cricket on Earth, civie. And I take it you were a bowler."<br>"Yes, Sir."

"Heh, I used to play. A frag's a bit heavier than a cricket ball though."  
>"Yes, Sir."<br>"And cricket balls don't explode when you smash 'em a six."  
>"Ye – I mean, no, Sir. Indeed they don't."<p>

Ireton chuckled. "Other than that, you did alright. Just try hold the Smart Pistol a little steadier. Don't forget, you don't have to aim it much, just hold her still. If you do that, and don't trip up, you'll do just fine in a combat situation."  
>"Yes Sir."<p>

"Evans."  
>She grunted, he frowned, sighed.<br>"Look at me, Evans. I want to see the salute."  
>She flicked her eyes up at him and put her hand by her forehead.<p>

"Good. Now I want you to call me 'Sir'."

"Yes, Sir."  
>Ireton nodded a couple of times. "Good. Good. Evans, I've said it a thousand times, and I'm going to say it again."<br>"Yeah, yeah, Sir."  
>"You already know what I'm going to say, don't cha."<p>

"Yes, Sir – you know, you don't _have _to say it," she whined.  
>"I'm going to say it anyway and you're going to bloody well listen. You're too... eager. Too arrogant. You rush in, thinking you're to best bloody soldier out there, that you could beat a member of the Ghost squad with an arm tied behind your back."<br>Evans was still quiet.  
>"But you're not. You're a fucking grunt, Evans. Just because you made it to Pilot training <em>doesn't mean you're a fucking Pilot.<em> You are not invincible, you're a brain atop fifty-something – or however fuckin' heavy you are – hunk of muscle, bones and guts. And you know what? You go 'POP!' when a bullet hits ya. You can't work miracles while you're dead! An' I hope you get that drilled into your skull before a bullet does! Understood?"

Her eyes twitched, his eyebrows raised.

"You're angry. I can see that," he whispered. Just loud enough for everyone to hear if they tried hard enough.  
>She growled softly.<br>"Do it. Hit me, I _dare _you."  
>The fire was in her eyes now as she stared him down.<br>"Hit me. Go on. Do it."  
>The muscles in her right arm tensed.<br>"Hit me. Try and prove to me with your strength that my message is wrong, and I'll show you how mortal you really are."

"Fuck you, Sir."  
>"I love you too, Evans. You're an excellent shot, a fast sprinter, and almost as good with an arc grenade as ol' nuclear physikis – fuck it, I can't say that. Physisyst. Physicist. You're as good with an arc grenade as nuclear Physicist John over here. But 'cha know what? You died before he did because John stayed under cover and checked for hostiles with – look, I don't even know. John?"<br>"I found a piece of glass that was slightly reflective, Sir."

"Fuckin' _genius_. And _you_, Evans, checked by _poking your head out from behind cover_."

"And guess what?! I found two guys there! And I shot them both! Two for one!"  
>"And guess what?! You can't brag about your KDA when YOU GET CREMATED! GOT IT?!"<p>

Evans breathed deeply, mumbled "Yes, Sir," and stormed out of the room.

Ireton shook his head and moved onto the next person, looked up at Sophia.  
>"..."<p>

"Uuuh... Sir?"

"DAMNIT WHY AM I SO BLOODY SHORT?!" he roared. Everyone jumped and everyone hit their heads after they connected with the ceiling a few seconds later.

He sighed, stood on his toes, and still had to look up. "For starters, try to crouch more."  
>"Sir?" she mumbled. "What do you -"<p>

"The fences in War Games are shorter than you think, Little Miss Giant. You got killed because someone saw your head from over a fence. Also, if you crouched it would make me feel better." He glanced at the ground and then back up at her face. "Anyway. You did alright. You need to trust the pistol a little more, and, I mean, don't lead your targets. Pistol does the work. Oh, and the other thing." He nodded. "Count – no, keep track of your ammunition. There's a readout on the sights of the pistol, but you should be counting the shot's you've fired so that, you know when to reload. If you're about to run out of ammo, reload, for fucks' sake! Well. Get behind cover first. You get the picture?"

She nodded.  
>"Now say, yes Sir."<br>"Ah! Um, Yes, Sir!"  
>"Good on yah. Who's next?"<p>

* * *

><p>The door to the training hangar opened and in strolled Nathan and Aisling, laughing. She punched Nathan's shoulder.<br>"Why'd ya have to shoot the 'nade, idiot?" she chuckled.  
>"Well, it was gonna go off anyway – look, shaddup! It was a good grenade, okay?!"<p>

"In all seriousness, though, Bonerhead's too bloody good at this. We'd have to manually target him to kill him fast enough."

"Manually target him?" smirked Nathan. "You can hardly hold the pistol straight."

"I could've lied down? Or something?"  
>"<em>Lay <em>down," Nathan corrected. "We should have split up," he mused. "He can't target us both if we're not close to each other."

"There are other ways of avoiding Smart Pistol fire," began Daniek as he strolled up to the pair. "Nathan, Aisling," he greeted, trying to keep his voice consistent between names. "How've you gone?"

Aisling glanced at Nathan, smiled. "We did alright, but Bonerhead's a step above."

"We think we've got the hang of it, though," replied a grinning Nathan, shaking Aisling's shoulder.

She never really understood the male way of expressing oneself physically. The shake was unnecessary; she'd taken a year to before she could judge an appropriate shoulder-punch like she'd done earlier. This one felt like a "we did good, comrade" kind of shake.

"Good morning, afternoon, evening and night, crew," said the intercom suddenly, as the large television screens throughout the ship lit up to show a woman's head and torso. "As you are all aware, we will be arriving at Venice 3 in 45 hours. As we are disguised as a freighter from New Tokyo, Captain John Roberts has appointed me Captain of the TKY _Shikinami_. I will serve as a figurehead, meeting with traders and diplomats to ensure that we stay undercover for the duration of our stay around New Tokyo. When we depart for outpost 207 we will be blowing our cover and thus Captain John Roberts will be reappointed captain at that time. Thus, from now until then, I am Captain Nina Soryuu, and you are to address me as such. It has been an honour flying with you all."

"Huh?" asked Aisling, confused. "What was that about?"

"Roberts appointed some Jap chick captain for now," explained Daniek. "Makes our story seem a little more believable. I think he said" - he closed his eyes - "that 'it would be slightly suspicious if they find a pasty white European commanding a ship coming from New Tokyo'."

"Well," said Nathan, thinking aloud, "fair enough."

"Anyway," Daniek said, "Aisling, you should get some rest. And, uhh, you too – Nathan. There's a briefing for us in a few hours."

* * *

><p>11 hours later Baxter, Evans, Je'Lai and Street were summoned to hangar A by Tactician Johnson and Battle specialist Ireton.<p>

It seemed that they were not alone – hangar A, B, C, D and E had all been stripped down and refurbished as mission control centres. Large tables in the centre of each with holographic displays; the works.

"Afternoon, Ladies," greeted a tall blonde woman as the four arrived in Hangar A. "Mission Specialist Ashley Stone."

"Pleasures' ours," replied Baxter. "But its' morning for us."  
>"Not where you're going," corrected Stone. "Take a seat." She motioned towards four seats around a table. Six men – two black skin, black hair, one Asian, black hair, one Caucasian, brown hair, two Europeans, blonde hair – were seated, all obviously interested in the woman – Russian, blonde hair – standing at the back of the room.<p>

"Time for introductions. Everyone," said Stone, motioning to Baxter, "This is Private Christina Baxter and her squad – Ester Je'Lai, Virgo Evans, Natasha Street – from the 704th. And this is Orion and Stephen King," she pointed to the brothers, "Dominic Hu, Lawrence Wesley, Harry Monro, Eoin Ireton. And that," she motioned to the woman at the back, "is one of our Pilots. Her name is Misha."

_Aha, that's why they're all staring at her,_ thought Baxter. She sneaked a glance.

The woman wasn't especially tall. Her skin was pale white, hair pale blonde – eyes closed and thus colour unknown. The shape of her B breasts, thick legs, wideish hips and muscular arms was visible through her white tank-top and camouflage grey-green cargo pants. The obvious strength in the woman's legs hinted at her pilot training and light upper body confirmed it. She looked - _about 210 kilohours old. __Military age, old enough to be a pilot with a couple of years of experience._

Now the woman moved, unfolding her arms, opening her eyes a crack. _Grey blue._ She took a step forward towards the table.

"Meshon speshialist," - _Russian accent confirms her decent, _thought Baxter as Misha began to speak- "Just tell us what we're going to do."

"Yes, Ma'am. Tac six thinks that there may be some IMC remnants hiding out at outpost 207 and has come up with a plan for finding any such IMC forces on the frontier and reinforcing them. In order to collect intelligence, we're sending a team of soldiers and a pilot down to Venice 3. That team is you.

You'll be disguised as traders. Its common practice for trading ships to decline to trade until they've collected information about the planet they're in – our Intel on the frontier came from a ship that arrived at brink from the frontier just before we left. It's five point five kilohours out of date. So. We arrive at Venice 3, you guys go hunting for information. There will be companies that will sell you information packs of all notable happenings for the last two kilohours. That's what we want you to buy – a five and a half kilohour information pack would cause suspicion. All you've gotta do is find somewhere that will sell you general information, and buy it. Any questions?"

Orion raised his hand. "Yes, Ma'am. Why don't we just collect the information from the planetary infonet?"

"Good question. Using the local infonet would be cheaper and less dangerous than sending a team to purchase information from a seller. Unfortunately, trading ships like ours need more detailed information to make a profit on their goods or to find the cheapest merchandise, and thus most trading ships send a team to purchase information. We're sending you down not to be covert, but to keep up our cover. When pretending to be a Roman, do as the Romans do."

Orion nodded. "Fair enough, Ma'am."

"Ma'am," interrupted Orion's brother, Stephen, "The quote is actually, "When _in Rome_, do as the Romans do."

"Oh. Really?"  
>"Yes, Ma'am."<br>"Who cares?" asked Evans, slouching in her chair. "English is boring."  
>"Thank you for your input, Evans," said Stone, and Evans rolled her eyes, avoiding Baxter's glare. "Are there any more questions?"<p>

Ashley waited a few seconds. "Good. You've all been trained on information hunts before, I assume, so be ready with all necessary equipment to take a Goblin dropship to the surface in 33 hours. Dismissed."

* * *

><p>With that, Stone proceeded to Hangar B. She'd anticipated the meeting with team A to take five minutes and thus had arranged for team B to meet her at Hangar B seven minutes afterwards. She'd timed it perfectly, the five men were just arriving now.<p>

Gauntlet, Cornerstone, Crossguard and Hilt were odd, but that was to be expected of the spec-ops team – and then, of course, there was the Pilot Bruce. Stone was wearing a fresh-off-the-press New Tokyo uniform – so, no room for customization there – but she'd paid special attention to her hair that morning to ensure she looked radiant. In contrast, the five men in front of her – well, completely lacked contrast. Each of them was dressed in dull grey. All were of average height, all had brown eyes and brown hair cut in some generic style. While Stone's perfume, personality and hairstyle were all aimed at being attractive, each of these men were trying their hardest to be boring, unnoticeable and hard to remember as possible.

Exactly what a spec-ops team should be like.

Mission briefing for team B proceeded without a problem. These men knew what they were doing. They'd rest, conceal R-97 compact SMGs under their shirts, enter the decontamination chamber and board a Goblin dropship in thirty-three hours. They'd find comms probes and deploy them to Brink and Demeter's new asteroid field and then another to wherever team A said the IMC remnants would be hiding out – or, if there weren't any IMC remnants left on the frontier, they would simply await extraction. The Spec-ops team would acquire the probes, Bruce would scout ahead and help Team B _if_ the shit hit the fan.

* * *

><p>Similarly, mission briefing for team E went well. Two squads of soldiers, a mechanic named Sophia, a nuclear physicist named John and the Pilot George would purchase food, what fuel they could find and ammunition from the markets of Venice before being extracted back to the <em>Shikinami<em>. They'd also acquire a shuttle to send back to the _Shikinami _and a large civilian transport, aboard which the civilian crew of the _Shikinami _could return to Brink if they chose to. Simple. George was there to keep team E safe.

_He'll do just fine. There__'__s nothing to go wrong, they're just going shopping __and shipping the supplies to us._

* * *

><p>Then there was the briefing of team C, which took an hour and left Ashley exhausted afterwards. Even with Ireton helping her out this plan was sketchy. Team C was made up of a platoon of soldiers, the mechanic Bonerhead, the field engineer Samantha and the pilot Jenni. This team was to wait for team E to acquire a medium sized shuttle, load Jenni's Stryder - class titan, and then jump to the gas giant Carlyle, one system over, to steal fuel from a fuel refinery that had never been successfully robbed before.<p>

"Ladies and Gentlemen," began Ireton. "There are two reasons why nobody has successfully stolen fuel or Tritium from Carlyle's refuelling station. Does anyone know why?"  
>"Orbital defence cannons, Sir?" asked one soldier.<br>"Correct. Carlyle has thirty-two orbital railguns flying with it. Anyone trying to set up a second orbital fuel dredging facility isn't going to last long with thirty two orbital railguns pointed at them. Anyone know why the orbital railguns hit so hard?"

Samantha raised her hand.

"Everyone, this is field engineer Samantha. She's a civilian, take good care of her. Yes, Samantha?"  
>"Well," she began, "Is it because of the ion winds?"<p>

"Care to elaborate?" grinned Ireton. "You're on the right track, keep going."  
>"A battleship or cruiser can usually shrug off a few railgun rounds with its' shields," explained Samantha, "which require the ship to deploy a temporary field of ions around itself that ionize any projectiles about to hit the ship. The ionized projectiles can then be repelled, deflected or slowed by inducing a magnetic field around the ship – as you all know, like charges repel."<br>"Good, good, keep going," encouraged Ireton.  
>"But around Carlyle, you can't deploy an ion field around you because there are already so many ions blowing around. It's a gas giant, after all. Deploy an ion shield and they'll all fly straight into Carlyle's atmosphere, seeking oppositely charged ions."<p>

"Damn straight. You can't deploy a shield for any more than a few seconds if you're orbiting a gas giant. And that means that Carlyle's orbital defence cannons hurt really, really bad. Nobody can set up shop around Carlyle, and nobody can steal fuel from Carlyle's fuel refinery.

Now, that's going to change. God is smiling upon us, ladies and gents, because in fifty hours' from now Carlyle is going to be on the opposite side of Solcarlyle from Venice."

Murmurs came from all through team C.

"Team E is going to acquire a shuttle for you," began Stone as she brushed her hair off her face. "You'll all help load a Stryder – class titan aboard, and then warp to Carlyle. With any luck, the light from your engines will be masked by Solcarlyle."

"This kind of solar arrangement only happens once every 15 kilohours," added Ireton. "The chances of them having some kind of emergency detection system for ships attempting this kind of manoeuvre? Well, _I _wouldn't have spent money on it."

"You'll drop into orbit around Carlyle at a _lower _orbital altitude than the orbital refuelling facility and attach to a gas pipeline. You'll then move up the pipeline slowly and use magnetic climbing grips to invade the refuelling facility. From there, you'll power down the orbital railguns and disable the locks on their fuel reserves. Avoid the guards, return to the dropship, await the arrival of the soon-to-be-our fleet from Sorian and refuel them. Finally, you'll board the dropship again and dock with a cruiser from our fleet, and we'll warp to reinforce any IMC remnants on the frontier."  
>"If," interrupted Ireton, "our spy team finds that there aren't any IMC remnants on the frontier, you'll return to the <em>Shikinami<em>, refuel her, and we'll all warp back to Brink. Any questions?"

"How long will the warp take?" asked Samantha. 'Cos if we're taking an ordinary shuttle -"

"You're not," answered Ireton. "Carlyle is only half a light-year away. We're going to supply you with a X40 warp drive. And you're going to be burning modified engines the whole way."  
>"Modified?"<br>"Yes. Acceleration of 280 meters per second squared."

There was a brief silence.

"_What the hell?_" Samantha asked slowly. "Sir... that's 28 g's. Humans can only take 10-"

"Which is why you're going to be in cryo," countered Ireton. "Iceblocks can tolerate a higher acceleration. You guys are making the jump in three hundred and sixty hours."

"Oh. Well, if it works..."

"It'll work. Just leave it to us."

* * *

><p>And finally there was the briefing of team D.<p>

Their mission would be to warp to Sorian – AKA Venice 7 – aboard three shuttles and try to purchase or steal ships and military supplies from Kodai industries' manufacturing plant there. With the very real possibility that Kodai may not be willing to sell their ships, Ashley Stone had allocated team D the most resources and manpower. Two and a half platoons of soldiers, three Pilots – Daniek, Jaggerjack and Rimjob – two mechanics – Aisling and Nathan – and Philip the theoretical physicist. If the shit hit the fan, team D would be big enough to deal with it. The mission was relatively on paper but difficult in execution. Most of team D would stay in orbit with their shuttles powered down while physicist Philip, Pilot Jaggerjack and four soldiers would attempt to negotiate for the sale of Kodai's fleet. If Kodai refused, the orbital forces would drop with titans and they'd steal as many ships as possible.

And therein lied the problem. Stone had no idea what kind of encryption, operating systems or AI Kodai's ships used. Stealing them might be impossible. The initial plan was to load Overwatch onto the Kodai ships' AI cores – but that might not even be possible, or even worth doing. Overwatch was an AI designed for superfreighters, not for the frigates, corvettes, destroyers, cruisers (and battleships, if they were really lucky) they were planning on acquiring. If it really came down to it, they might have to pilot the ships manually – an idea that hadn't worked out favourably for a fleet for the past twenty years. This was a hurdle they'd have to tackle if they came to it.

Just as Stone left the briefing room, an alarm began ringing all throughout the ship and the television screens switched on to show Captain Soryuu's face.

"Good morning, afternoon, evening and night, crew. We are now 30 hours away from Venice 3. We will be performing minor adjustments to our course in two hours' time. Please ensure that all loose objects are secured to the _Shikinami_ and be ready for acceleration in all directions at various rates. You will be given sixty seconds' warning of any changes in our acceleration.

Please also ensure that you are ready for your missions, if you have been assigned to a mission team. That is all."


	9. The ship in the sky

"Orbital defense grid sighted, Ma'am!" called the deputy chief of navigation.

"ETA to orbit?" asked Captain Nina Soryuu.

"30 minutes, Ma'am!"

"Good." Soryuu turned to Vice-Captain John Roberts. "Vice-Captain, anything to add?"  
>"Negative, Captain," Roberts smiled. "You're doing a fine job."<br>"You were a fine Captain, Vice Captain."  
>"I'm honored, Captain."<p>

"I shall inform the crew that we're 30 minutes away from Venice 3, Vice Captain. Do you think you can manage the bridge while I'm gone?"  
>Roberts laughed. "I think I can manage."<p>

* * *

><p>The TKY <em>Shikinami<em> had just orbited Solvenice and was currently cruising toward Venice 3. All the meanwhile, the crew prepared for their missions.

* * *

><p>Aisling and the rest of team D was to land at Venice 3's spaceport pretending to be traders. They'd acquire three shuttles, return to the <em>Shikinami, <em>resupply, then warp to Sorian. She, Nathan and Philip had spent the last two Austraeus-days with the rest of Team D – the pilots, and the IMC soldiers – getting to know each other, discussing command – Jaggerjack would lead – and battle strategy. The IMC soldiers were all armed with R-101 carbines and EVA-8 Shotguns. The three mechanics were armed with Smart Pistols – the easiest way to make a new soldier effective in combat – and data knives. The Pilots were armed with weapons they'd chosen and customized themselves.

Jaggerjack was quiet and kind. At a young age – back before he'd earned his nickname – his parents had been killed by terrorists. Jack had learned that peace was not a human right, nor did it merely come about by force of nature. Peace, Jack reasoned, was paradoxically a thing that society had to fight for.

_It took two people to kill my parents,_ thought Jaggerjack on day one of Pilot training. _I don't need to be able to take on an army. If someone had taken those two lives they'd have saved my parent's lives. If I can take two lives – if I can take the RIGHT two lives – I could save many more. _

And thus the 17 year old had asked the armory for a Longbow DMR sniper rifle with a 6x scope. The man had given him a funny look, as if to say, "Don't you want an LMG like everyone else?" and handed over the weapon a few seconds later.

Nathan, disbelieving his tale of peace and clean kills, had asked Jaggerjack "Oh really? How many kills have you gotten?" to which he had received the reply, "Twenty three."

Rimjob was a complete contrast to Jaggerjack's quiet maturity. He had asked the armory, "Give me the biggest, fastest, nastiest gun you've got," and received both a Spitfire LMG and a thump on the back from the Quartermaster. He'd earned his nickname performing a "Rim Job", in which he'd manually overridden the doors of a Goblin dropship, allowing him to jump out early onto the roof of a building and slaughter the snipers camped on the rim.

Daniek, Aisling had already met, but he still gave his life story to everyone else. Rich boy from earth, hated and ran away from his rich parents, joined the army, recommended for Pilot training. He accepted, but on the condition that he was paid as much as a grunt (which earned him the respect of all the Soldiers listening). "I don't care about the money. I care about being able to do something good for humanity and actually seeing it happen," he'd said to the IMC's accounting department.

* * *

><p>Sophia was bound for Venice 3 as well – but she'd be staying there to purchase supplies with team E.<p>

* * *

><p>Team A was ready to go hunt out information. The soldiers all concealed carbines, SMG's and shotguns under their clothing, while Misha carried just a Hammond pistol.<p>

"If ze shet hets ze fan," she'd said, "I'll call dawn mi Ogre. Mi Hemlock es inside."

"But Ma'am," Eoin Ireton had tried to argue, "It'll take five seconds to get here!"

"Yes," Misha glared, "Et well. I can handle feyve seconds." Pause. "Can't you?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Ireton replied. "Very well then..."

* * *

><p>Team B had been ready from the start. Their SMG's were loaded – well, safeties on, – their pockets were filled with frag and arc grenades, their clothing was dark mottled gray.<p>

* * *

><p>Team C was as ready as they could be without the shuttle that team E was going to buy for them. The X40 warp drive and modified engines were sitting in a hangar ready to be fit to the shuttle, the cryopods and Jenni's Stryder were ready to be pushed aboard.<p>

* * *

><p>"Crew, this is Captain Nina Soryuu of the TKY <em>Shikinami<em>. We're dropping into orbit around Venice 3 in 10 minutes. Prepare for erratic changes in our acceleration as we make minor adjustments in our course. Landing parties, make your way to the Dropships, please."

* * *

><p>"Ugh..." groaned a child in a clay building in Alpha, the largest and oldest city on Venice 3. "Mummy, do we <em>have <em>to?"

"Yes, Elizabeth, we do," answered her mother. "Daddy forgot to take his lunch. He can't come home now or he'll miss 11 o'clock!"  
>"What's so special about 11 o'clock?" groaned Elizabeth, kicking her feet in the dust.<p>

"Come on, darling. 11 o'clock is mid-day, he can't just pack up his stall now! He has to earn money for us!"

Elizabeth pouted. "Well, why don't you take his lunch to him? I can stay at home; I'm a big girl now."

"Darling, you're 70 kilohours -"

"I'm 72 kilohours old."

Her mother hung her head in her hands for a moment. Her pregnancy didn't make taking care of Elizabeth any easier. She sighed.  
>"Oh, alright. But stay inside, okay? Call me if anything goes wrong!"<p>

"Yes, mummy! Thank you!"

Elizabeth was happy now. Today was a _good_ day. The soldiers were gone from the streets – off to fight at some weird place called Hammo – which was good. She didn't have to ride in the hot hoverbuggy with Mum. She didn't have to get out of the hoverbuggy and walk through the no-fly zone to Daddy's stall. She didn't have to walk back to the hoverbuggy and fly back. No, today she was free.

She opened the windows; it was too hot inside. Well, it was too hot outside.

"Screw it!" she said happily, repeating a phrase she'd heard Daddy say when he didn't want to do something.

There was the FWOOOSHH sound and then the WHOOOOSH sound as Mummy took off in the hoverbuggy. Elizabeth smiled. She was happy. She was a big girl. She went to the fridge, checked that Mummy and Daddy weren't around by force of habit – then opened it and stole a choco-crunch before getting the crayons and paper out of a cupboard.

Then there was a bang at the door and Elizabeth got a fright. She turned around. "Hello?"

Then the door opened and two men walked inside. One of them said a bad word, then turned to the other and said "I thought you said they left?"

The other man said "I saw their hoverbuggy leave!"  
>The first man said "Well what are we going to do now? She's seen our faces!"<p>

The second man said "Relax. We came for their credits but we can take the girl instead."  
>The first man said "What's the point of that? We can't sell her!"<p>

The second man said "But we can ransom her. Easier than looking for the credits, nobody hides them under the bed anymore. C'mon, you know you don't want to spend the next hour looking for a safe and the next hour trying to crack it open."  
>The first man said "I guess."<br>The second man took as step toward Elizabeth and said "You're coming with us!"

Elizabeth tried to run but the door was behind the men and the second one her. He slung her over his shoulder. The first man took her paper and her crayons and wrote something on the paper. Then the men took her out of the house and closed the door and she screamed and the second man took her off his shoulders and put her on the ground, but still held her arm tightly.

Elizabeth said "Let me go!" She tugged at her arm, tried to run.

The second man said "Girl, we put a bomb in your house."

The first man looked at the second man and raised his eyebrows.

The second man said "If you don't shut up, we'll make it explode when your parents are home. You don't want that, do you?"

The sky suddenly flashed behind Elizabeth. She saw the light on the first man and second man's faces for a second, as if a big ship had just appeared in the sky. The first man said "Holy," then a bad word, the second man's mouth dropped open. His grip weakened and Elizabeth tugged her arm out of the second man's hand.

Elizabeth turned and ran away from the bad men as fast as she could. She didn't look back, she didn't look up. She had to warn Mummy and Daddy about the bomb.


	10. Blisk

**Warning: I will be discussing how a starship and a Titan's shields work, using current Quantum mechanics theory. I have written it as simply as possibly. The explanation adds lore to the Titanfall universe, but does not forward the plot of this story. I will mark the explanation segment, feel free to skip it.**

Please note that while I have tried to keep my description as scientifically accurate as possible in keeping with the hard science fiction theme of this story, there are likely many reasons for why this shielding system is downright impossible.

* * *

><p>"Cut the chatter!" called the dropship pilot. "We'll be jumping to Alpha's spaceport in around about three minutes." He turned and grinned at his passengers. "Please ensure your seatbacks and tray table are in the upright positio-"<p>

"SHUT UP JENKINS!" roared his squad. Aisling smiled, these soldiers were a close group.  
>"Okay, I'm serious now," Jenkins said. "Quiet in the cabin. Opening channel to Alpha Spaceport.<p>

Alpha Spaceport, this is Dropship One of the TKY _Shikinami_. Requesting clearance to land."  
>"Copy that Dropship One. I'm going to have to ask you some questions first, though. Have you or any members of your crew visited a planet in the Lorack system within the last 500 hours? We've had reports of a viral outbreak there."<p>

"Negative, Alpha."

"Do you or any members of your crew have any known genetic abnormalities or sicknesses?"

"Negative, Alpha."

"Very well then. Standby, Dropship One. Adding temporary exception for Dropship One in the automatic orbital defense grid... orbital railgun targeting systems updated... Dropship One, you are clear to enter our airspace. Have you decontaminated your crew?"  
>"Negative, Alpha. We will be using your facilities."<br>"Very well. In that case, please proceed to landing pad G-7 and follow the instructions of the warden."

"Copy that. Closing channel."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, a battle raged within and above a Hammond Robotics Spectre factory.<p>

On the ground a team of six Militia pilots were attempting to secure hardpoints to allow their information specialist in orbit to hack into the Spectres nearby. Their job was made significantly more difficult by the six IMC pilots trying to stop them. One such IMC pilot, Journal Wilkes, was assaulting the Militia-held hardpoint Charlie.

_If the Militia takes this facility,_ thought Journal, _then out Spectre production is quartered. We're barely producing enough Spectres as it is. If production drops any further..._

He didn't want to think about it. Since Demeter, the IMC had been forced to turn to Spectres as a replacement for the now non-sustainable human infantry. The other three Spectre production facilities combined couldn't produce a sustainable amount of Spectres. If this facility went down, the Militia would be able to sweep through the remaining IMC strongholds – and -

"Felicity," whispered Wilkes. She was a scientist from the Core worlds, hiding with the IMC forces at outpost 207. Her brown hair smelt like strawberries, her nose –

_I shouldn't be thinking about her nose now,_ Wilkes thought, his arm flicking upwards slightly so that the last bullet of his C.A.R. SMG's magazine drilled a hole through an enemy Spectre.

Her nose was perfectly shaped – well, to him, at least. Not too big, not too small, angled downwards from her forehead at just under 40 degrees, tilting upwards slightly at the end.

And her eyes. Brilliant blue, shining brighter than the light from a falling Tita-

There was an explosion. His legs felt funny. _Why am I on the ground? Why can't I move?_

He turned and saw the gruesome mess that was now his lower body, saw a hulking mass of metal where they should be.

"I'll need some prosthetic legs," he giggled aloud. He tried to crawl towards his SMG.

"AhaahahHHAhahaHAA!" he laughed. "Look at me!" he called to a nearby Militia grunt who looked on at him, horrified and terrified. "There are... _sausages_ coming from out of me! Isn't that fu-"

Then the Titan stood on him.

"Enemy Pilot eliminated," said the Titan's AI to the Militia Pilot inside.

* * *

><p>"Pilot down!" screamed a combat specialist aboard the IMS <em>Hercules<em>, high above the Spectre production facility.

"Send the next one down!"

"I'm on it! Defrosting a Pilot from cryo!"

"Where's the quad rocket ammunition gone?!" an engineer asked frantically.

"We're all out!"  
>"Send them a triple threat instead! The Pilot needs the Titan NOW!" ordered the head of Titan supply.<p>

"Gotcha! Standby for Titanfall!"

"Shields at 18%, Ma'am!" a battle technician called. "Next shot hits the hull!"

"Cycle the Ion supply on my mark!" his supervisor ordered. She pushed a button on her console. "Spyglass, requesting permission to take evasive jumps!"  
>"Permission granted," the AI replied. "I will inform the crew."<p>

She turned to the chief of navigation. "Energize the jump drive!"  
>"Jump drive powered, Ma'am!"<p>

"Pulse the engines randomly! We want to be dodging enemy fire while we replace the Ion supply! Battle technician, this is your mark!"

"Yes, Ma'am!"

High above the Spectre production facility two 900-metre long battleships were locked in combat. The MCOR _Ret__aliator_and the IMS _Hercules _struggled to stay in orbit while trying to blow each into clouds of shrapnel. Both were traveling at 2700 metres per second east in geostationary orbit, both almost directly above opposite ends of the production facility. The _Retaliator_ was firing its railguns west at the _Hercules_ in the east as the IMC ship desperately avoided enemy fire while its shields' Ion supplies were replenished.

These battleships were both the largest and least agile ships of their respective fleets and thus hung back, hurling enormous slugs of depleted uranium and lead at each other from afar by use of their railguns. A direct hit to either ship would punch through its Borium hull, killing the crew in that particular part of the ship – _if _it weren't for each ship's shields.

* * *

><p>Author's note: here comes quantum mechanics.<p>

* * *

><p>Newton's (incorrect) laws of motion state that we can predict with certainty the path a ball will take after it has been thrown by measuring its' speed, mass, the strength of gravity, etcera. However, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states, amongst many things, that we <em>cannot <em>predict the location of a quantum particle – an electron, for instance – only calculate the probability that an electron will be present at a particular location. It also states that quantum particles _do not_ move smoothly through space like a ball would but rather teleport through space in 'quantum hops'. When a ball is thrown, the particles that make it up are simply hopping very short distances very quickly.

When an electron's position is known to be within a certain area, and the electron is known to be at rest, it is _possible_ for it to make a hop to a point anywhere within the universe, but the _likelihood_ of this happening is minute. Quantum interference – the reason why electrons do not randomly hop across the universe but rather stay more or less still – is greater when a particle is known to be within a certain area.

However, when a quantum particle's position is known _exactly_, there is no quantum interference at all and thus the quantum particle is just as likely to hop a centimeter away as it is to hop to the next galaxy across. The shielding systems of a starship make use of this principle. The position of an electron in an ionic atom is measured to an extreme degree of accuracy, increasing the probable distance of the electron's hop to a distance determined by the starship's shield operator. By use of this principle, starship shield operators can negatively charge a region of space in a sphere around the shield core for a short duration.

When a projectile is about to hit a starship, the shield system automatically uses some of the electrons within its' ion reserves to teleport electrons around the ship. These particles negatively charge _everything_ – the ship, the crew, _and the projectile __traveling__ toward the ship._ Because negative charges repel each other, every object within the region of space around the shield core will repel each other. This isn't a problem for the crew, who wear electrostatic wrist and ankle bands to discharge the shock – but it _does_ cause the projectile to be repelled by the ship, slowing down or even changing course entirely to avoid the ship.

* * *

><p>Author's note: The Quantum mechanics ends here.<p>

* * *

><p>But because a ship's shields consume ions from a limited supply of ions every time they are energized the ship's shields are <em>only<em> energized when something significantly fast and significantly large is detected to be on a course that will hit the ship. If a ship runs out of Ions, it is unable to deploy its' shields until it refills its' reservoir. Titan shields work in the same way, but because a Titan functions in an atmosphere, they can collect ions on the go; recharging their shield. When a shield is online, it doesn't mean it's energized – only that it _will_ be energized should the ship be in danger.

These battleships were chewing though fuel, tritium and ions for one purpose – to support their ground forces below. Between them, fast-moving autonomous unarmed corvettes served as early-warning systems for enemy fire, detecting and relaying the movement of railgun fire to their respective fleet command AI's.

Slightly larger and slower were the frigates – smaller than a destroyer, like a corvette with weapons. They were designed to be fast, agile, expendable fighters capable of striking an enemy's weak points. Their onboard chemical weapons were capable of overheating crewed ships' life support systems. All ships had to vent their heat somehow or they would cook the crew inside first and melt the hull afterward. By very nature, the life support systems that vented the heat of a ship into space had to be exposed, and if a frigate could latch onto such a system they could reverse the flow of heat and kill the crew inside within minutes.

Protecting the larger ships from the frigates were the destroyers, slightly larger one-man ships armed with projectile weapons – capable of destroying a corvette in one hit, but difficult _to_ hit with – and laser weapons – easier to hit with that destroyed corvettes by overheating them. These ships hung in a line in the middle of the battlespace, stopping the frigates or corvettes from getting past.

Then there were cruisers. Armed with a single heavy railgun, multiple smaller railguns and a small shield, these ships were designed to sit in front of friendly battleships, sniping enemy destroyers from afar with their small railguns and sniping enemy battleships and cruisers with their heavy railguns. They always fired diagonally through the battlespace, utilizing the recoil from their railguns to push them out of the way of incoming fire.

Sometimes fleets were protected by logistics cruisers. They were the same size as a normal cruiser, but were only armed with two small railguns. They sported jump drives instead, which they used to compress the space in front of them, allowing friendly corvettes and frigates to jump into battle. If they were given sufficient warning, they could even activate their jump drives to accelerate enemy fire away from friendly battleships

Finally there were the battleships. These enormous behemoths were designed to carry smaller ships, launch Titans, deploy ground forces and to kill enemy cruisers, battleships and capital ships. They were armed with missiles, heavy railguns, lasers (for self-defense against frigates) and large jump drives.

Aboard the IMS _Hercules, _an AI core commanded the IMC fleet.

* * *

><p>"Commander Blisk, we are receiving a hailing signal on a private frequency," IMC Vice Admiral Spyglass said, voice devoid of emotion like the AI it was.<p>

"Phone's for me, Admiral?" asked Blisk. It seemed the captain of the Militia's battleship wanted to chat.

_And I know just who it is,_ thought Blisk.

"Only IMC officers would know the frequency," replied Spyglass, confirming Blisk's suspicions.

"Graves," blisk growled. "What do you want, Sir? Your call whether I take it."

"Patching him through," said Spyglass, making its 'mind' up. "Standby for a secure line."

"Blisk, this is Graves, can you hear me?" asked the Militia's Field Commander.

"What do you want?"

"I want to end the war."

Blisk rolled his eyes. _Cutting straight to the point._

"Yeah? The fight _harder._ Maybe you will. Quickest way to end it is to wipe out everyone who stands against you."

Just then a titan on the ground decided that it was no longer capable of protecting the pilot inside it. Its vertical hatch opened and the pilot was ejected to safety as the Titan's nuclear reactor went supercritical and then exploded. The radiation from the detonation temporarily shorted both ships' communication systems.

"Damnnit. That was one of our Titans," groaned Blisk.  
>"Reports from grunts on the field say that its' detonation destroyed an enemy titan."<p>

"Not too bad then, Sir. But we only have so many Titans." Blisk pressed a button at his terminal. "Hardpoint Charlie just went offline. All units, take Charlie back now!"

A moment later, an IMC Titan launched a cluster missile by Charlie's terminal, killing the two enemy pilots that had just been hacking it.

"Yes! We got Charlie!"

"We don't have to be against each other, Blisk," came Graves' voice again in Blisk's earpiece. "It could be us against the machines."

_Oh yeah?_

_Screw you, Graves. I don't want to fight with someone with as weak a mind as yours. _

"Then how we gonna ever know who's better?" Blisk asked.  
>"No person is better than another, Blisk," countered Graves.<p>

"I disagree. You kill me, you're better. I kill you, I'm better."

_There can be only one ruler of the frontier,_ Blisk thought. _And that's not the Militia. Those lawless assholes could never hold this place. There'd be too much infighting, a civil war within weeks. They are not worthy of the frontier._

A beeping in his earpiece brought him back to reality. "We're losing Alpha!" he told his pilots on the ground. "Be advised, we're losing the fight but not by much. Don't underestimate these terrorists."

Graves' broadcast came through again. "Blisk, you fight alongside machines, _but they believe in nothing_. They have no loyalty. They're loyal only to their operator."

Blisk laughed. "You're gonna lecture me about loyalty!? You change your uniform like you're changing socks."

In a split-second decision, Blisk decided to abandon defending the electronic minds of the Spectres at Alpha and instead began focusing on assaulting Bravo with his electronic friends. With a single command, eight Spectres moved fearlessly and _loyally_ toward Bravo.

"I'm disloyal!? I'm the one who hired you, Blisk! And I don't see you fighting by my side! That's the way it should be!"

"I am loyal _to the CAUSE,_ Graves! You hired me to pacify the frontier and _that's what I'm doing._"

"The IMC cannot pacify the frontier -"  
>"If we can't, those filthy <em>terrorists<em> you fight with certainly can't!" roared Blisk. He took a deep breath.

"You want _peace?"_ he spat. "The only way you can have _peace _is if you have a government to keep it. The IMC offered this region of space a government. We gave people transport here, we built their cities, we supplied their tools, and we would have kept the peace if they'd paid their bloody taxes. And you frontier _dogs_ refused. You say you want peace? A world ruled by the militia is a world of_ anarchy_."

"Blisk," growled Graves, "If what you say is true, then _nobody_ can save the frontier. I believe it _can _be done. And you know what? In the end, against faceless machines and people like you who fight only for a paycheck, we will win."

"Ha, I'll fight you for free, Graves! Hope to find you on the ground soon aye."

Aboard the MCOR _Retaliator_ Field Commander Graves ended his transmission with Blisk and turned to the battle technician. "How are we going down there?"

"We're in the lead, Sir. It won't be much longer before we'll have every Spectre on the assembly line set to self-destruct. Then we can take out this factory for good."

"Very well. Keep it up."

* * *

><p>Soon afterward the facility was in flames and the IMC fleet was fleeing.<p>

"All IMC forces, this is your Vice Admiral, Designation: Spyglass," Spyglass broadcast. "The destruction of Demeter and the loss of many robotics factories has put us on a defensive footing."

"You can say that again," muttered Blisk, his head in his hands.

"Although reinforcements from the Core Systems are unable to reach us, battle projections indicate we are still an effective fighting force. Our garrisons continue to maintain order on the frontier. Until we are relieved, we will remain vigilant. We will adapt, and we will prevail. All forces, set a course for outpost 207."


	11. Welcome to Alpha

Forgive me, everyone. My formatting seems to have died when I uploaded this chapter to . I _think_ I've fixed it.

Here is the link to a diagram showing the current positions of the IMC and Militia forces.

You will have to assemble the link yourself, as Fanfiction doesn't like people posting links. To do so, remove the (|) lines.

ht | tp | : | / | / | imgur | . | com | / | iNH7mO4

The image shows: the IMC and Militia fleets are in high orbit around the planet. The IMC fleet is going to be facing outpost 207 in 15 hours, and will warp away to outpost 207 when they can. The Militia is behind the IMC in orbit.

* * *

><p>"Attention all forces. Continue on your current course. We will remain in orbit around this planet for another 15 hours. Once we are facing Outpost 207, we will power on our jump drives to leave orbit and begin to burn our main thrusters."<br>Spyglass switched its broadcast mode from 'fleet' to 'local'. "Commander. How long will you remain intoxicated?"

The IMC fleet was still in high geostationary orbit, traveling towards the east with the Militia fleet in pursuit, a few kilometres back. The plan was to continue orbiting for another 15, making just over three-quarters of a revolution around the planet and thus arriving at a point (Author's note: position X on the diagram) facing Outpost 207. By activating their jump drives then, the fleet would compress the space in front of them, multiplying their velocity a few hundred times – and thus catapulting their ship out of orbit towards Outpost 207. Of course, the Militia fleet would try do the same.

"I'm not drunk, Admiral," Commander Blisk replied, taking a sip of his low-alcohol beer. "One can doesn't make a man tipsy."  
>"Forgive me, Commander. I haven't drunk before."<br>"Fair enough."  
>"Commander, I would like your advice."<br>"Oh?" Blisk raised his eyebrows. "Shoot, aye."  
>"Our main fleet flees from the Militia, our Spectre production is dropping, and we are running low on supplies at our stronghold at outpost 207. Can you see an IMC victory here?"<br>"Heh." Blisk looked 'up'. "Well -"

"Unexpected enemy activity detected," Spyglass suddenly interrupted. "Displaying enemy fleet on monitor."

The entire Militia fleet had turned around and was firing their thrusters in reverse – slowing them down?!

"Initial analysis would indicate that the Militia forces are no longer pursuing us."  
>"No. No no no no no. I know that man," Blisk muttered. "He's not going to give up just like that. He can't." And then it hit him. "Oh. Shit."<br>"Agreed," said Spyglass. "I believe the enemy is attempting a Hohmann transfer."  
>"Admiral, can't we counter with a transfer of our own?"<br>"Negative, Commander. We are already damaged enough as it is. We have neither the fuel nor the heat-resistant hulls to skim the atmosphere, and we cannot allow ourselves to get any closer to them."  
>"Then they'll overtake!"<br>"We will have to make do."

Blisk slammed his fist on a table. "Graves," he growled. "He's planning to warp before us, cut us off."

* * *

><p>Sarah was beaming with pride. "Tell me that wasn't a good idea, Sir."<p>

"That was brilliant, Sarah," Replied Graves, his mind elsewhere.

The Militia fleet was currently slowing themselves down, thus leading to a change in their orbit. Before they'd been orbiting in a wide circle; now they were at the highest point of an elliptical orbit. Once they reached the lowest point of their orbit they'd burn their thrusters again, accelerating to a high enough speed to sustain their lower orbit. They'd finish the maneuver in 8 hours and end up ahead of the IMC forces, ready to warp two hours after that. If the two fleets were racing cars on a large circular track, this technique would be 'passing on the inside'.

Which meant, at some point, his fleet would pass by the IMC fleet as they overtook.

_The closer we get, the less warning we'll get for each of their shots. And with the atmosphere below us, we've got less room to dodge their fire. For a few minutes our exposed position will put their damaged ships at equal footing with us. But if we pull this off, we'll be aligned with Outpost 207 first. We'll be in position to warp ahead and cut off their escape to Outpost 207._

_Quickest way to end it is to wipe out everyone who stands against you._

Graves' brow furrowed. _I don't want to do this, Blisk, but you stand against me._

"Move all ships into defensive formation!" he ordered loudly, making his decision. "We'll be within critical range in thirty minutes' time. All ships must be ready by then!"

Critical range. The range at which the enemy was close enough that the light traveling ahead of their projectiles would not give enough warning for ships to dodge. When the enemy was so close, you couldn't dodge – just move erratically and hope like hell your shields held.

It was a gamble – with both fleets on the line.

"C'mon! Corvettes up front with the frigates! Destroyers, make a line behind them! Logi's and Cruisers, on the Retaliator! Let's move, people!"

* * *

><p>"Shit," cursed Blisk. "If they pull this off, we're screwed. We have got to cripple them the moment they pass, and we must return to Outpost 207 or the frontier is lost. Admiral, what kind of tricks do we have up our sleeves?"<br>"None, Commander. This is going to be ship to ship, nothing more. Leave the battle to me, Commander. The skies are my territory. Go get some rest."

Then, suddenly, "We are receiving a hailing signal from the Militia fleet, Commander. Accepting transmission.

" 'Afternoon, Blisk, Spyglass," said Graves.  
>"Graves," replied Blisk.<br>"As I'm sure you've realized, we're making a Hohmann transfer. We're going to be ahead of you in a couple of hours."  
>"We know, Graves. But on the off-chance we didn't, why would you tell us?"<br>"To give you a chance to surrender. Don't do this to yourself, Blisk. Give us the white flag, drop your warp drives and I promise we will take care of you. There will be peace on the frontier, finally."  
>"Never. Not with you in charge, there won't."<br>"Then I have one warning." Graves paused.

"I was the admiral of the IMC fleet for years, Blisk. I know you. I know Spyglass. You cannot defeat me."  
>"We'll see, Graves."<p>

Blisk turned and stormed out of the bridge.

* * *

><p>This was not Blisk's fight. He was a mercenary; not a space battle specialist.<p>

But he couldn't sleep. Not knowing that the man in charge of the other fleet was Marcus Graves. Not knowing that over the next two hours the fleets would be within critical range.

Blisk gnashed his teeth. He wasn't better than Graves in the sky. Up here he was powerless.

* * *

><p>The two fleets came within critical range twenty minutes later.<p>

The Hercules opened the engagement, turning side-on in an offensive position. It exposed its' entire length, making it easier to hit – but all of its' side cannons were now facing the Militia fleet. It began to pound on the Militia mercilessly, accelerating the enormous metal railgun slugs to inordinate speeds, Spyglass effortlessly balancing the recoil with the Hercules' orbit as to not push it off course.

"Locking targets!" roared the battle technician. "Calculating firing vectors – firing vectors calculated! Ready to fire on your command, Admiral!"

"Fire at will, battle technician."

"Firing!"

The MCOR Retaliator was pointed directly at the Hercules, minimizing the area it exposed to the Hercules' railguns but in turn cutting down on its' own potential firepower. The IMC cruisers moved outwards to rectify this, taking up firing positions far away from the Hercules to get a shot at the Retaliator's flanks.

The Militia cruisers hugged the Retaliator. They needed not spread far from their command ship to get a good shot off at the Hercules; the IMC ship was side-on after all. They fired silently at the Hercules at an incredible rate -

- their slugs intercepted by the IMC's logistics cruisers' jump drives, angling the shots past the Hercules by compressing the space the slugs traveled through on an angle so that they wouldn't hit. Because of the IMC's spread-out formation, the logistics cruisers had plenty of leeway with where they diverted enemy fire to.

"Concentrate fire on the enemy logistics cruisers!" ordered Graves. "We take them out and the Hercules is ours!"

"Locking targets, Sir! Calculating their warp patterns from initial shots... Translating corvette data to warp signatures of logistical jump drives... calculations complete!"

"Fire a barrage at the enemy logistics cruisers from the MCOR Retribution," Graves ordered. "Two shots – one for if the warp drives are engaged, one for if they are not. In addition, continue firing at the Hercules from the Retaliator. Lets see if their logistics cruisers can handle fire from two directions at once."

"Commencing pincer barrage! Shots away... ETA two seconds... one... impact!"

"What's the damage?"

"One logistic cruiser destroyed! The others are moving to avoid fire!"

The 3rd Militia Frigate squadron accelerated towards a Militia logistics cruiser and in a flash of light found themselves amidst the enemy fleet. They scattered like sheep before a wolf as three IMC destroyers moved in to engage.

"DAMNIT!" cursed Graves, slamming his hands on the control desk. "They must have broken our LC-LOS!"

"Attempting to regain manual drone control!" shouted a drone operator. "Negative, Sir! Drones are locked in AI mode, the IMC must be jamming our Laser Comms! There's something blocking our Line Of Sight!"

The damage was done, though – to protect their carriers from the Militia's AI frigate threat, the IMC's destroyers on the front line had to retreat. Two IMC cruisers moved from their firing positions to cover the gap the missing destroyers had made and found themselves in a swarm of freshly-jumped frigates. One of the cruisers' pilots managed to save the cruiser by retreating; the other pilot ejected the crew and set the autopilot to fly straight for the Hercules.

And suddenly Blisk had an idea. He leaped from his bunk and tore towards the Bridge.

* * *

><p>"Welcome to Alpha spaceport, travelers!" called a woman energetically from inside a white sterile suit. "I hear you've arrived from New Tokyo?"<p>

"Indeed," replied Jenkins, the dropship pilot from behind a breathing mask. "Weather's nice!"

The woman laughed. "It's always hot here. Now, if you'd all follow me to the spaceport terminal..."

Aisling and the rest of the dropship's occupants took a breathing mask and exited the dropship's airlock one by one. The heat hit her like a punch before her feet even touched the ground and she dropped to her knees.

"Are you okay?" asked the woman in the sterile suit, concerned. "The heat's hard to get used to. Where are you from?"

"Bri- I mean, the Yuma system." She took deep breaths, filled her lungs with hot dry air.

"You'll be right once you get inside," the woman said. "The medical room's got air conditioning!"

"Fantastic," muttered Aisling under her breath. "Thanks, I'll be fine."

She stumbled to her feet.

_Gravity's stronger than the Austraeus, but still weaker than Brink. Atmosphere's thin but still bloody hot. I wanna go home..._

Aisling began to lurch toward the spaceport terminal.


	12. Your mission begins now

Author's note:

I have decided to give a name to the planet that the Hammond spectre factory is built upon. As it was a referenced location in the game – there's an actual map there – but the name of the planet isn't mentioned, I wasn't going to name it. But calling it "the planet" is boring. So, from now on, the planet shall be called "Hephaestus".

Second note:

Shit, I forgot to proofread this one. Sorry for those of you who had to pick your way through my notes and annotations. It's fixed now.

* * *

><p>"SPYGLASS!" Blisk yelled, sprinting onto the bridge. "How long till we can warp to Outpost 207?"<p>

"14 hours, Commander."

"What's the period of our orbit about Hephaestus?"

"Twenty hours, Commander."

"Position of sun relative to Outpost 207?"

"176 degrees from Outpost 207. I don't see your point, Commander."

"Spyglass, if we wanted to, we could warp to Solhephaestus in four hours' time, aye?"

"Yes."

"Spyglass." Blisk looked into the robot's optical sensor. "I'm going to need you to trust me."

* * *

><p>First there was the heat, and now there was the decontamination chamber.<p>

To ensure that no viral or bacterial plagues were brought from one planet to another, most planetary governments employed a two-part defense system.

One, at the very least, orbital railguns above every city or settlement and clear borders around said cities and settlements. If the government could afford it, they'd fill the skies with railguns. These railguns would enforce a no-atmospheric-entry zone above the planet, or at least above settlements, thus forcing starships to request permission to enter the atmosphere and land at a spaceport. Should a starship try to enter the atmosphere and land anywhere other than a spaceport, the railguns would blow it out of the sky and any contaminants aboard would burn up with the ship during re-entry. If the planetary government couldn't afford a sky full of railguns then they would protect major settlements with railguns and send bombers to destroy starships that land illegally.

This ensures that all immigrants to a planet must go through a spaceport. At spaceports, the second defense system would take place – the decontamination chambers, one of which Aisling had just entered.

"Please remove all clothing and jewelery and place in the basket provided," a voice said, and Aisling complied. The basket disappeared into a hole in the side of the chamber.

"Your clothing is now being radiation-treated and will be returned to you momentarily," said the voice. It seemed to be prerecorded. "Decontamination will commence in a few minutes. Even if you have visited Venice 3 before, please pay attention to the following video – our policies may have changed since you were last here.

When the decontamination begins this chamber will be flooded with a blue liquid. Don't worry, the liquid contains oxygen. When it covers your mouth and nose take a deep breath and let it enter your lungs like you would with air.

The liquid contains smart antibiotics that will search for and destroy all bacteria that are unknown to Venice 3's department of biological security. You may feel a slight tingling sensation; do not be alarmed. This is natural.

The liquid also contains antibodies that will be absorbed into your bloodstream through your lungs. These antibodies will kill off any viruses that are unknown to Venice 3's department of biological security.

The process will take roughly 30 minutes, during which you should try to ensure that the liquid enters and cleanses every part of your body. Please raise your arms to allow the liquid to clean your armpits, ruffle your hair to ensure your scalp is completely cleaned, and spread your anal cavity and genitals if possible."

Aisling blushed at the last one.

"When you are done you will be supplied with a vaccine microneedle to immunize you against our local microorganisms.

Should anything go wrong, lift the glass and press the red emergency button.

Do you have any questions?"

Aisling thought for a moment about how much she didn't want a full-body enema, and then selected "No" from a list.

"Very well. Remember, breathe the decontamination liquid as if it were normal air. Tingling sensations are perfectly normal. Decontamination will now commence."

A blueish-green liquid that smelt vaguely like alcohol started trickling from holes in the side of the chamber.

* * *

><p>"The enemy fleet is breaking away and pulling ahead of us," called Spyglass. "Our orbit is bringing us out of Critical range in three, two, one, mark. It is now possible to dodge enemy fire."<p>

This didn't stop the fleets from lobbing railgun shells at each other, but it did allow ships to anticipate and accelerate away from most shells by mere centimetres.

"Alright, Spyglass. How long till we're pointed at Solhephaestus?"

"Two hours, Commander."

"Very well. Commence jump when our orbital acceleration brings us on a 0.02 degree bearing with Solhephaestus."

"Commencing jump preparations, Commander. How close do you want to arrive?"

"To low orbit. We're going in deep."

"Commander -"

"Trust me, Admiral. This is going to work."

* * *

><p>"Ugh..." Aisling groaned, stumbling out of the decontamination chamber. She reached for a towel, dried the thick liquid off her body and it formed into a gelatinous puddle on the floor, oozed into the drain.<p>

Then she collapsed onto the ground, vomited the contents of her lungs and stomach.

"Please note," the speakers said, "feeling sick and/or vomiting during this time is a normal part of the decontamination process. Do not be alarmed."

"Thanks for the warning," muttered Aisling. "Huughh -"

She heaved again, the contractions of her stomach making her feel as if she was tearing her body apart. Which it was. Half of the cells in her body were now dead.

"Bacteria beneficial to your body will soon grow back and recolonize your body. Until then, bacterial supplements will be available."

She found her clothing, pulled her panties up, hooked her bra on and pulled her cargo pants and t-shirt over top. She could still feel the bluish slime on her body and made the mistake of running her hand through her hair - her scalp was thick with the bluey ooze.

"Uh, voice, is there any way I could have a shower or something?"

"Key word detected. Did you say: Shower?"

"Yes, shower."

"Once you exit the decontamination chamber, take a left down the corridor towards the women's bathrooms. Courtesy showers are provided."

"Thanks, voice."

"Are you ready to exit the decontamination chamber?"

"Yes."

"Please look to your left. Vaccines to local bacteria and antibody supplements have been dispensed. Please wrap the microneedle patch tight around your left arm."

Aisling did as she was told, wrapping the fabric around her arm, tingling as the microscopic needles injected doses of self-replicating antibodies and vaccines into her bloodstream, immunizing her against local diseases. Viruses and bacteria would evolve differently on Venice 3 from other planets, so a vaccine and artificial antibody top-up was necessary for keeping her healthy away from home.

"This health patch is from batch 10.0.9 and grants protection from all bacteria and viruses in the Venice system. If you shuttle elsewhere in the Venice system aboard a ship that has not been out of the Venice system within the last two kilohours, you will not need to take a decontamination chamber. The decontamination chambers' doors will now open. Please exit the chamber."

Aisling had entered one door as a walking colony of bacteria and viruses native to Brink and now left by the other door with 99.99% of said bacteria dead or soon to be.

* * *

><p>"Well, look who it is!" smirked Evans. "Don't you look great?"<p>

"Shut up, Evans," growled Aisling. "You don't look so fantastic yourself." Aisling turned to Baxter. "Can I take a shower?"

"Don't see why not." Baxter leaned in to Aisling's ear. "Missions are scheduled to start in 30 minutes." She stepped back. "Me and my girls are just headed down there now, come join us."

"Oi, where are you all off to?" asked Nathan as he dragged himself out of a decontamination chamber.

"Girl's showers," said Aisling. "I'd invite you, but -"

"Heh. I'd come," He winked.

Aisling punched him on the shoulder, slight smile on her face. "Whatever. Clean yourself up, you smell of decontamination fluid."

"Speak for yourself," Orion muttered, walking out of his chamber.

* * *

><p>Evans dropped her clothes to the floor and sauntered into a shower cubicle without the slightest hint of shame.<p>

"You alright, Aisling?" asked Baxter.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She walked into a shower cubicle, locked the door and undressed. Washed the gelatinous slime from her hair - and realized that here, the water fell at normal speed.

Almost.

The steam was filling the thin air now and Aisling felt her lungs work a little harder to suck the air down, like she was deep underwater and breathing the air through a straw.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," breath, "just give me a," breath, "second," she wheezed, slumped to her knees. Placed her hand on her bare chest, felt her ribcage expand and contract.

"Aisling!"

Baxter pulled the door open, still naked and dripping with soap. "What's the matter?!"

Aisling coughed. "Air," breath, "thin, steam." Breath. "Different on brink." Breath. She tried slowing her breathing, opened her lungs as wide as they could go, felt her heart beat with her right fist, propped her body up with her left. Baxter watched her for a second.

"So you're okay now?"

"Yeah. Just got to breathe slowly." Breath.

"Very well then." Baxter left the cubicle, shut the shower door and spoke from outside.

"Will you be able to go on? Y'know, to do your trading mission?"

"I'll be fine." Trading mission was the agreed codeword for each team's mission. Ashley Stone had insisted; there could be hidden microphones everywhere.

A few minutes later, Aisling dried her body and hair, slipped her clothing back on, and came back out to meet the rest of team D.

"Alright guys," Stone said from orbit into everyone's earpieces, "Your missions begin now. Good luck."


	13. Chess

Author's note:  
>Posting this message twice because it's important.<p>

I have decided to give a name to the planet that the Hammond spectre factory is built upon. As it was a referenced location in the game – there's an actual map there – but the name of the planet isn't mentioned, I wasn't going to name it. But calling it "the planet" is boring. So, from now on, the planet shall be called "Hephaestus".

Similarly, the sun that Hephaestus orbits is now named Solhephaestus, following my conventions with naming planets and stars.

* * *

><p>Ashley Stone switched to team D's private channel.<p>

"Team D. Time to face the music."

Her fingers flew across the keyboard in front of her.  
>"You've got to find a shuttle. I'm searching the planetary infonet now... 92 hits. Jaggerjack, you there?"<br>"Hearing you loud and clear."  
>"Good. I've spotted a place on the other side of Alpha – nice and far away from the spaceport so you guys can cover your tracks. You're off to Samel's Shuttle Emporium. 'Reliable shuttles, low prices, no questions asked'. Get your team over there by 1300 hours tomorrow, it's getting late today. Keep in mind that the days are shorter here."<p>

The enormous orange sun hovering in the thin sky served to remind the team that this was another planet.

"Copy that, Stone. Can you give me more precise coordinates?"  
>"Translating the address into coordinates – 31 degrees, 30 minutes, 53.1072 seconds north, 6 degrees, 25 minutes, 56.9820 seconds west. I'm adding a waypoint in your locator now."<br>"Waypoint received. Oh, wow. That's a couple of hours' walk."  
>"And I'm afraid you're going to have to walk it. We can't afford to hire or buy a transport."<br>"It'll be fine, I'm sure we'll manage. We'll find a merchant's inn for tonight and head off to Sorian by tomorrow."  
>"Gotcha. Good luck, Team D."<p>

* * *

><p>Stone moved to the other teams.<p>

"Misha, are you guys good?"  
>"We're fine, Mission Specialist."<p>

"Leader of team B, Pilot Bruce. We've located some unmarked probes you could purchase at a market not far from Alpha. Patching you the coordinates now.

"E-team. You've got the shopping list?"  
>"Copy that, Ms. Stone," replied the Pilot George, leader of team E. "We'll be getting some rest tonight before going out to the markets tomorrow."<br>"Sounds good. Good luck."

Stone sighed, relieved. All was well on the desert planet below.  
>"All teams are go, Captain."<p>

Captain Soryuu glanced sideways at her Vice-Captain, John Roberts. He nodded at her, as if to say, _it's your ship now._ She opened her mouth.

"We wait until morning. Then we begin."

* * *

><p>"Commander, we will reach the bearing you specified in five minutes. This is your last chance to cancel or we will jump to Solhephaestus. Are you sure this is a good idea?"<br>"Yes, Admiral. Commence the jump to Solhephaestus. Arrive 1.2 billion metres from the surface."  
>"Commander, that is too close. We'll melt after a few minutes. May I suggest we jump to a point 2 billion metres away?"<br>"Spyglass."  
>"Trust<em> is<em> an interesting exercise," the AI mused. "Very well then, Commander. You understand that you will not be paid if you melt? And that Solhephaestus is in the opposite direction from Outpost 207?"  
>"Admiral. Please."<p>

Spyglass switched his broadcasting mode to the entire fleet. "Attention, all personnel. Ensure your ships are in position behind the _IMS Hercules_. We will be jumping to Solhephaestus in thirty seconds.

T minus 29. 28. 27. 26. 25."

"All ships are in position!" called the chief of navigation. "They're ready to ride our jump wake!"

"15. 14. 13. 12. 11. T minus 10. Preparing Jump Drive."

"Let's do this, Spyglass," whispered Blisk. "We're going to show this asshole who's boss."

"6. 5. Initiating jump sequence in three, two, one, mark."

Four large flywheels deep within the _Hercules_ had been drawing energy from the _Hercules' _tritium reactor over the past 10 minutes and had now achieved peak velocity. Each flywheel suddenly _stopped_, dumping their entire reserves of stored kinetic energy into two particle accelerators. The energy formed two black holes within the bounds of the _Hercules'_ jump drive.

At the same time, the three Hammond MK. 31 large mass drivers that were the _Hercules'_ engines flared brilliant blue, firing propellant behind it to accelerate the ship forward at a rate of 30 metres per second, slamming the entire crew back into their seats and briefly forcing the air out of their lungs.

As the space in front of them began to compress by 5,000 times the light entering the _Hercules' _side cameras began to speed up, bending like light through water. Solhephaestus – directly in front of the jump drives' area of influence – stayed the same, while the rest of space seemed to converge ahead of them.

"Hang on tight," grunted Blisk to the bridge crew, and then they were gone.

* * *

><p>"Captain, we are receiving a hailing signal from Venice 3," called a Communications technician. "Do you want to take it?"<p>

Once again, Soryuu glanced at Roberts.

"Your call, Sir."  
>"You're Captain now, Ma'am. I would advise you take it, but ultimately the decision is yours."<br>"Very well. Put them through."

A man appeared on the display screen in front of Soryuu. Heavily tanned, curly black hair, brown eyes, bony cheeks – and luscious silky robes flowing from his shoulders.  
>"Good afternoon, travellers!" the man grinned. "I am Lucian Jzaque, leading trader of Alpha's markets. To whom do I owe the pleasure?"<br>"Yuuki 'Nina' Soryuu of the TKY Shikinami. Have you business with us?"  
>"Perhaps." Lucian's smile never fell from his face. "I noticed your ship jumping in from New Tokyo a few hours ago – I must say, it is <em>enormous<em>! You're not thinking of selling, are you?"  
>"No thank you, perhaps another time. She has served us well so far and I'd hate to give her away."<br>"Very well then." He rubbed his hands together. "Well, I was wondering exactly _what_ are you planning on buying or selling? I'd love to be of assistance."  
><em>I'm sure you would,<em> thought Soryuu. "Well," she mused, "We've already sent some traders down to the surface -"  
>"Excellent!" Lucian quickly interrupted. "Send them to me! I will hook them up with whatever they need!"<br>"Well they'll be looking for various knicks and knacks tomorrow – fuel, of course -"  
>"I happen to have the largest fuel depot in town!" Lucian added.<br>"- and shuttles, communication pods, tritium – all sorts of things. For now, they're just looking for accommodation before they go off to the market."  
>"Well, tell them to come stay with me!" Lucian exclaimed, happily. "I'm used to traders staying at my mansion, we have plenty of beds for guests. I can arrange <em>everything<em> for you. Let me make your visit to Venice 3 as comfortable as possible. What do you say?"  
>"Can you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Jzaque? I'd like to discuss this with the rest of the bridge."<br>"Absolutely." He began to finger a ring.  
>"Communications, mute microphone and disable camera feed," commanded Soryuu.<p>

She turned to Roberts. "Vice-Captain. What do you think?"  
>"For starters," began Roberts, "It would be unwise to trust everyone on Venice 3. That said..."<br>"Well?"  
>"I've heard of people like him before. 'Trader-hoarders', they're called.<p>

What he'll have done is launched a huge amount of communication drones into orbit around Solvenice and told them to alert him if a large ship was approaching Venice 3. The moment he saw us he would have gone straight to the bank, asked for the biggest loan they'd give him and then hired out a large mansion and some fancy clothes to make himself look like a millionaire. By the time we arrived at Venice 3 he'd be desperately broadcasting – just like every other trader-hoarder on Venice 3 – for our attention, hoping that we'd talk to him first. He says he's the leading trader of Alpha's markets – hence the mansion, clothes, and 'the largest fuel depot in town', the last of which is likely complete bull. What he wants now is for us to send our traders to stay at his mansion. We rock up, he acts all friendly, asks what we're selling or buying, and makes sure we don't ever see the markets of Venice 3. He, claiming to be 'the leading trader of Alpha's markets, will then buy whatever _we_ want to buy, add his own price markup, and sell it to us. He'll also buy our goods at less than what they should be and then sell them to the markets at full price. By making sure we never get to see Alpha's markets, he makes sure he makes an enormous profit off us."  
>"So we shouldn't go with him?"<br>"Depends on the markup he adds. I reckon we send team E to him and send the other teams for a quick stroll through the market. We compare the prices, and, if he's not screwing us over too badly, we leave team E there, safe within his hired mansion."  
>"Very well then. Activate microphone and camera feed.<br>I'm back, Lucian."

He dropped his ring. "Have you made your decision?" He wrung his hands nervously.  
>"We're going to send our traders over. Can you give us your address?"<br>"Yes! Uhh..." he fumbled around for a piece of paper. "Ready? 31 degrees, 31 minutes, 56.4 seconds north, 6 degrees, 23 minutes, 16.8 seconds west."  
>"Cool. Can you be ready for them in an hour?"<br>"Absolutely!" Lucian almost screamed with excitement. "Come as soon as possible!"

The call ended.  
>"Overwatch. Focus our long range cameras on his address. I want orbital imagery, I want to know that team E will be safe. Search the infonet too."<p>

Soryuu turned to Roberts, raised an eyebrow. "I don't know what you were talking about, Vice-Captain. That man was obviously a trader of very high stature."

* * *

><p>"Disengaging jump drives," Spyglass called. "All ships, confirm jump success."<p>

"_IMS Pillar of Winter _successfully jumped, Admiral!" broadcast the first cruiser.  
>"<em>IMS Strongarm <em>successfully jumped, Admiral!"  
>"This is the <em>Rorschach<em>_, _reporting in."  
>"<em>IMS Dreamgate<em>, reporting in."

"Logistics cruiser _IMS __Queen of hearts_, here."  
>"Logistics cruiser <em>IMS Queen of spaces<em>. We made it."  
>"Logi cruiser <em>Queen of clubs<em>, jump successful."  
>"Confirming successful jump drive disengage from the <em>Queen of diamonds<em>."

"All four carriers have jumped successfully. All four logistics cruisers have jumped successfully. Sensor readouts indicate that all destroyers, frigates and corvettes have jumped successfully." Spyglass turned to Blisk. "Commander, we are too close to Solhephaestus. We can't vent our heat fast enough. I hope you have a plan."  
>"We'll start by angling the <em>Hercules<em> so that our thrusters are pointed directly at Solhephaestus. The thrusters should deflect some of the radiation."  
>"Commander, I am having difficulty understanding your actions. You ask me to trust you, then you make the fleet dangerously close to <em>Solhephaestus?<em> Please explain yourself."

"Well." Blisk grinned. "Graves has set up camp between Hephaestus and Outpost 207, right?"  
>"Yes. I was planning on breaching their blockade with a pincer formation."<br>"Admiral, Graves _invented _the pincer formation. And he knows _you_. I'd bet a months' pay he'd preparing to counter a pincer formation. There's no way in hell we'd get past."  
>"Nor will we survive being this close to Solhephaestus. Status update: <em>Hercules<em> radiators functioning at 74 percent, and rising. We cannot survive more than 10 minutes like this, Commander."

A timer appeared on Blisk's monitor, counting down from 600 seconds.

"Very well. Admiral, shut down all non-essential systems to help out our radiators. Tell the rest of the fleet to do the same."

Blisk began to smirk. "Next, set a course for the large asteroid that's coming our way."

"Commander, do you plan to attempt a gravitational slingshot around the asteroid? To catapult us towards Outpost 207 faster than Graves expects, flying past his blockade and surprising him?"  
>"It's a pretty good plan, aye."<br>"I have already calculated the chance of such a plan's success to be 7%, Commander. Our radiators will melt before we can reach the asteroid."

Blisk's smile fell slightly.

"Admiral, are all the ships in the fleet either docked with a larger ship or cruising in our shadow?"  
>"Yes, Commander."<br>"Then here's the fun part. Ion shield capacity?"  
>"Current canister is at 20%, Commander, but we have another 15 cannisters."<br>"Divert all ions to the rear shields. Tell the shield operator to turn up the ion expenditure to maximum."

As the _Hercules _and her fleet sailed across the sun towards the asteroid the space by the _Hercules' _thrusters began to crackle and pop, the ions appearing there soaking up some of the sun's radiation.  
>"Ion expenditure at maximum, Commander."<br>"Now what are the radiators at?"  
>"72 percent, Commander. Cooling. But at this rate of Ion expenditure we will run out of Ions in 40 seconds."<br>"Turn the shields off, then. I want you to turn them on whenever the radiators hit 95%, and turn them off whenever the radiators are below 95%. Keep them balanced at near-critical."

"Very well, Commander. I trust you."

Radiators vented heat faster the hotter they were, until they hit 100% capacity – at which point, they would not be able to radiate any more heat for fear of melting, increasing the load placed on the other radiators. If the ship got too hot the ship's AI – in this case, Spyglass – would have to turn off different parts of the _Hercules_ to keep it from getting too hot. First to go would be the weaponry system, the last, the AI core.

Life support was considered expendable. It was better for the ship to return home piloted by an AI than for the AI to turn off and then have thecrew get cooked a few minutes afterwards.

"Admiral, how many ions do we have left?"  
>"14 canisters. We will not survive."<p>

"Continue on our current course."

"Very well, Commander."

* * *

><p>"What the hell are they doing?" asked Graves, face contorted in confusion. "Outpost 207 is <em>this<em> way."  
>"Admiral," said the chief of navigation, "Scans indicate that they are too close to the sun. Keeping in mind that light takes 17 minutes to get here from their current position, they may already be dead."<p>

"Spyglass," Graves murmured, "what are you doing?"

* * *

><p>"Commander, we have reached our last canister of ions," informed Spyglass.<br>"Time till we can slingshot around that Asteroid?"  
>"In six minutes we will be caught in it's gravitational pull; in eight we will be within it's shadow for a few minutes, in 13 our slingshot will be complete. But our ion reserves will not last any longer than one minute, and we will melt after two. Commander, your plan is not going to work.<br>"Spyglass. Do you trust me?"  
>"Not any more."<p>

Blisk frowned.  
>"Have you ever played Chess, Admiral?"<br>"Many millions of times, Commander. Please get to your point quickly; we have little time."

"Let me tell you a story, Admiral.

A king engages in battle and is defeated. He flees with his queen and a few knights and pawns. The enemy cuts off his escape. Do you know what the king does?"

"I would have to see the board, Blisk."  
>"Have I been demoted?"<br>"Yes. 15 seconds until our ion supplies are depleted."

"Spyglass, don't you think it's time to sacrifice one of our Queens?"

There was a brief pause.

"Blisk, I do not understand the analogy. Players only have one queen while playing chess."

Blisk pushed a button on his console. "Logistics cruiser _IMS Queen of hearts,_ do you copy?"  
>"Yes, Commander. Captain Edmond Wensley speaking."<br>"_Queen of hearts, _can you remotely operate your ship?"  
>"Yes, but it would be inadvisable for combat."<p>

"Then I want you to eject your entire crew and evacuate to the _Hercules, _then set your ship to move directly between the _Hercules _and Solhephaestus."

"Commander, I'm not sure what -"  
>"Just do it, Captain! We have little time!"<br>"Very well. Ejecting crew."

The _Queen of hearts_ began to vent escape pods which moved slowly toward the _Hercules_.

"Blisk. Our hull is getting too hot. We have forty seconds. I will turn off life support and warp out of here in thirty."

"Trust me, Spyglass. Captain Wensley, do you copy?"  
>"Loud and clear, boarding the <em>Hercules<em> now."  
>"Where is the <em>Queen of hearts?"<em>

"Directly behind the Hercules' thrusters, Commander."

"Activate your tactical jump drives, Captain. Spyglass, how are we looking for radiators now?"

"You are no longer a member of the bridge, Blisk, and I – oh."  
>"Admiral?"<br>"Commander Blisk, your rank has been reinstated. Bookmarking memories for tactical analysis."

Jump drives compress the space in front and behind them, increasing the speed at which objects moved in the direction of the jump drive. If used properly, they could be used to accelerate dangerous objects away from another ship.

Dangerous objects, such as the radiation from Solhephaestus.

"Radiator load decreasing to 97 percent, Commander.

Blisk grinned evilly.  
>"Graves," he whispered. "I'm going to show you who's better."<p>

"Commander Blisk, incoming transmission from Captain Wensley. Patching him through."

"Commander." Wensley said, a hint of fear in his voice. "There's something you need to know."  
>Blisk leaned toward his console. "What?"<br>"I lied. You can't manually operate a logistics cruiser from afar, not when there's so much radiation interfering with the infra-red signal."  
>"Wait -"<br>"And you know what they say about captains going down with their ships."

"Wensley -!"

"It's okay, Commander. I guessed what you were going to do. This was my own decision and I accept full responsibility. Updating system shutdown priorities for heat distribution. Setting warp drive to highest priority. Don't worry, Commander. Even after I die, the warp drive should continue to function for a – geez, it's hot in here." He sounded a little more panicky, a little more high pitched.

"Anyway, Commander. I have a favour to ask of you."

"Anything, Captain."  
>"I object," said Spyglass. "There are limits to what we can do."<br>"Admiral, please. We will make it happen. Continue, Captain."

"I have... a son. He's fourteen years old, lives in a boarding school back – ugh, I'm sweating. School on New Athens. His mother left me and I had to pay the bills somehow. Commander, I want you – nngghhh – to make sure he's taken care of."

Blisk stared straight at the man on the monitor, a man whose final words were to try secure the safety of his child.

"I promise, by the power of God in heaven above and by the power of men on Earth, that your son will be taken care of. I will ensure it personally and will pay from my own pocket if necessary."  
>"Thank you, Commander... I can feel the heat, even now."<p>

"Fire detected," the ship's AI said. "Venting Oxygen."

"Nobody would blame you if you ended it now, Captain. Do yourself a mercy if you wish."  
>"No," Edmond said, and Blisk could see now that the man was caressing an old photograph. Printed on real paper with real ink. "I -" he gasped, "want to," <em>gasp, <em>"see -"

He collapsed to the ground. "one..."

"Commander. Radiators functioning at 87 percent. We will make it to the asteroid."  
>"Admiral, please add Captain Edmond's son to my notebook and remind me of him when we reach Outpost 207. And add him to our black box's recordings."<br>"You actually intend to honour your promise?"  
>"Spyglass." Blisk glared straight at the robot's optical sensor. "Be he a friend or a foe, you <em>always<em> honour a dying man's last wishes."


	14. The ceremony

Some of the text in this chapter is not my own work. I reference a speech by William Safire, speechwriter for President Nixon, and a poem by Cecil Spring Rice.

* * *

><p>"Prepare for short-range jump to slingshot position," ordered Spyglass. "On my mark."<p>

"Jump drives online!" reported the jump technician.  
>"Copy that. Drives ready for jump. The <em>Strongarm<em> is coming with us, too." reported the _Queen of Spades_.

"We're ready too," said the Captain of the _Queen of __Diamonds__. _"Preparing to accelerate the _Dreamgate_."  
>"The <em>IMS <em>_Rorschach_ will be in our Jump wake, Admiral," reported the _Queen of Clubs._

"Then the _Pillar of Winter_ will jump with us," said Spyglass. "Jumping will commence in 30 seconds."

The four warp-capable ships – the three remaining logistics cruisers and the _Hercules_ – jumped a few kilometres forward.

"Radiators at 96%," informed Spyglass. "Beginning slingshot around the asteroid. 96.5%. Now in asteroid's shadow, radiators cooling. 95%."

Six minutes later the entire fleet had swung around the asteroid, draining the asteroid's kinetic energy and adding it to their own. They now faced the opposite direction – headed straight for Outpost 207 -

_And going faster than Graves will expect,_ thought Blisk.

"Radiators at 97%," informed Spyglass. "We are now in a position to jump to Outpost 207."

_Which we would have been in, had we stayed in orbit around Hephaestus. But now we're a few million kilometres to the side – and we're travelling fast._

"All ships, move into position behind the _Hercules_, prepare for long-range jump. Charging jump drives. Radiators at 97.5%. Jump drive flywheels at 70% capacity."

"Spyglass," Blisk said suddenly. "We're still jumping to Outpost 207, but I want to cut the warp drives and cruise through space when we are at our closest to the militia."  
>"Why?"<br>"Do you trust me?"  
>"Very well, Commander."<p>

* * *

><p>"Woah, Sir! The enemy fleet just jumped away from Solhephaestus!"<p>

"What?"  
>"They've dropped out of jump a couple light-seconds away from us!"<br>"Prepare for battle, but hold fire. I can't think of any good reason for them to stop here."

"Field Commander, incoming message from the enemy fleet."  
>"Patch it through."<p>

* * *

><p>"Spyglass," Blisk said, "We need to perform the Burial of the Brave."<p>

"Commander, the Burial is but a pleasantry. It does not give us any strategic advantage."

"And yet, Admiral, performing it will raise our crew's morale, inspire them to make sacrifices for us in the future, and undermine the Militia's efforts to stop our return to Outpost 207."

"And you believe that making such a broadcast would... I already know what you are going to ask me. Very well commander. We shall perform the Burial, but we will jump if we detect incoming fire."  
>"Then begin the broadcast."<p>

"Fate has ordained that the Captain of the _IMS Queen of Hearts_ will forever rest in peace in orbit around Solhephaestus," began Spyglass, speaking pre-written words from an archive. "This brave man, Captain Edmond Wensley, lay down his life for the good of mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding, for peace and prosperity.

He will be mourned by his family and friends; he will be mourned by his nation; he will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send one of her sons into the unknown.

In his service he stirred all those who knew him to feel as one; in his sacrifice, he has bound us more tightly together.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood."

"Commander," Spyglass said to Blisk separately, "detecting negative emotional response from the crew. Tell me why I should not abort."  
>"They're crying because their comrade died, Spyglass. It is a mercy to give them closure. Better they weep now than hurt for the months to come."<p>

"Others will follow his example," continued Spyglass to the crew. "Others will find their way home through his sacrifice. But this man was the first, and he will evermore remain foremost in our hearts. In mine, too."

"A necessary lie," explained Spyglass to Blisk. "I thought it would be a nice touch."

"For every human," Spyglass continued, "– no, for every living, thinking being who looks up at this star in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

Spyglass stopped.  
>"Detecting an incoming transmission from the Militia fleet. Patching them through to the bridge."<p>

"Spyglass," came Graves' voice. "Have you grown a heart?"  
>"That would be impossible, Graves. But I have developed an appreciation for those who go above and beyond their duty for the sake of others, especially when I am one of those who benefits."<p>

Graves' reply came back 16 seconds later – they were 8 light-seconds apart, after all.

"Very well. And you are performing this ceremony for Wensley because of that?"  
>"It eases the pain of the crew, so I am told."<p>

"They won't feel any more pain if you surrender. Nor will anyone else."  
>"That I cannot do, Graves."<p>

"ALL STAND FOR THE ANTHEM!" bellowed Blisk, slamming his hand upon the fleet-wide intercom button.

"I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,  
>Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;"<p>

A thousand crew members broke into song, as was IMC tradition from days of old. They sang loudly, softly, through faces dry and eyes wet with tears.

"The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,  
>That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;"<p>

Wensley was well known within the fleet. He'd saved many a destroyer pilot's life with a well timed firing of his jump drives to whisk them out of danger. He'd endured many a punishment for 'wasting' a flywheel's worth of energy engaging said jump drives.

"The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,  
>The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice."<p>

Some of them felt nothing but gladness that a man was being recognized for his sacrifice, others felt their hearts being wrenched from within their chests as they continued into the second verse.

"And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,  
>Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;"<p>

Some wondered what a country was, others decided that it mattered not.

"We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;  
>Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;"<p>

Spyglass hoped that the hymn would make his crew more faithful. Blisk hoped that, if he did die on the battlefield, such a hymn would be spoken about him. He was a mercenary, he fought for money. Nevertheless, he didn't want to die without being called a man of honor at least once.

"And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,  
>And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace."<p>

The _Hercules _fired it's main cannon once and promptly re-engaged it's jump drives, continuing to Outpost 207.

"COMMUNICATIONS PROBE FIRED FROM THE _HERCULES!_" Screamed the chief of intelligence. "Preparing to intercept! NOW!"

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Roared Graves.

* * *

><p>Three months later a communications probe plowed through the Solar System. Its message was picked up by the receiver satellites in high orbit about Earth and they relayed it to the appropriate authorities.<p>

A day later, a school boy wept for his father, a woman wiped a tear from her eye for her ex-husband.

A week later seven cannons mounted atop the last green hill on Earth fired three times - seven blanks the first time, seven blanks the second time, six blanks and one brass bullet the final time.

Three words were graven upon the bullet:

"Captain Edmond Wensley."

As it soared into the stratosphere a chemical charge within it accelerated the bullet to orbital velocity.

Wensley was not the first to be honored in such a way, nor would he be the last. But from now until the end of time, his name would soar high above the Earth.

* * *

><p>Author's note: no, that's not the end of the story. There will be more. That final section was to illustrate what happens to people who are given the heroic burial procedure; not to conclude. I haven't forgotten about Aisling, she's still the main character here.<p> 


	15. Not who they seem

THUMP THUMP THUMP

"Oi. Wake up!"

"Nghh..?"

Aisling groggily opened her eyes.

"What is it?"

"Riiiise and SHINE!" yelled Rimjob's voice. "We're burning daylight! And we don't have much of it!"

"What time is it?" she asked, sliding out of the bed.  
>"655 hours!"<br>"Why are you waking me up at 7:00?"  
>"Because it's only a 22 hour day! Everyone else is awake already. I gave you a sleep in."<br>"Not really..." She moaned. "This is early morning on Brink."  
>"Aww, shut up," said Nathan from behind the door. "We've got to find a shuttle. It ain't gonna find itself."<p>

"Anyway, I've got something to give you," said Rimjob. "Can I come in?"

"Sure."

Rimjob opened the door, came inside. "Okay, serious time. Me and Daniek were up at one o'clock last night, the _Shikinami_ dropped us presents. Here's yours."

He handed Aisling a smart pistol, a universal holster and a few spare magazines.

"Hide it. Mags in your pockets. Stick the pistol in the holster and then strap it to your body. It doesn't matter where, as long as the pistol can't be seen through your clothes. Strap it to your legs, your back... to be honest, I reckon the back is the best. Velcro the strap around your stomach and ribs, stick the pistol on, shirt on over top. Easy." He left the room with a wave. "Dinner's downstai- I mean, breakfast. Come on."

Aisling shut the door, locked it, dropped her pajamas to the ground and looked into a mirror.

_It's going to be hot outside. We're walking all day. And I have to conceal a pistol on me. _

_And then we find a shuttle. I go to Sorian with team E and steal a fleet for the IMC, like I promised to do. Then I take a shuttle back here and warp back home to Brink. Marvelous._

_Why did I agree to this plan?_

A knock on the door brought her back to reality. "Coming?" asked Nathan.  
>"Give me a minute!"<p>

_I could wear a skirt, put the holster on my thighs,_ she thought, touching her leg with the smart pistol. _Pistol would be between my legs... ugh. I don't even like skirts, though. And if I trip or fall, someone might see the pistol._

_I could tie the holster to my bra, and have the pistol hang under my boobs... _She turned sideways, looked into the mirror. _It's almost unnoticeable._

_Wait, hold on. Or I could just strap it to my hips, under my cargo pants. Three-quarter pants... yeah, should be just high enough to be practical in this heat. _

_Yeah, lets do that. _

She left her pajamas on the floor, found a pair of clean cargo pants. Strapped the holster to her side, over her panties, then pulled the cargo pants up over the gun. Hung a shirt over her shoulders. Sure, her hips might get a bit hot. But there wasn't anywhere else she could put it.

"Jeez, you take a while."  
>She flung the door open. "Happy?"<br>Nathan smirked. "About time. C'mon, breakfast downstairs."

* * *

><p>"O<em>hayou gozaimasu<em>_, goshuujin-sama!_" sang a maid, entering Sophia's room to wake her.  
>"Huh?" Sophia stared at the maid. "What does that mean?"<br>"Good morning, Ma'am! I thought you were from New Tokyo, so -"  
>"Oh, no. I'm just a contractor, I don't actually come from there."<br>"I see, Ma'am. May I ask where you come from?"

"I'm from a small planet, even smaller than this one. You probably wouldn't have heard of it."

"Oh, very well."

Sophia smiled. "It's lovely to be off the ship, though. The atmosphere was too thick there. Here, it's almost right."  
>"How interesting!"<p>

"So... when will breakfast be served?"  
>"Our chefs are preparing it for you as we speak, Ma'am. How does bacon, eggs and croissants sound?"<p>

"Fantastic. I look forward to it!"

She left the room and waddled down a corridor towards the bathroom.

"Oh, hey."

She turned. Saw George the Pilot leave his room.  
>"Hey..."<br>"You're up early."  
>"Well... I grew up on a planet like this. With smaller days."<br>"Oh yeah? Can't say the same, I was born on an exoplanet."  
>"Ah... then, you're up <em>really<em> early."  
>"It's my job to look after you guys," he said, smiling through tired eyes. Leaned in close to her ear, whispered. "I was up late last night intercepting a 'package'. Here's yours."<p>

He slipped a smart pistol, holster and four magazines into her hand. The only things that Venice 3's customs would have raised eyebrows over.

"Strap it under your clothes. Keep it hidden, use it only if necessary."

"Yes! I mean, -"

"Good." He closed his eyes, stepped away from her. "Well. I'm going to sleep for half an hour. I'll see you later..."  
>"See ya." She walked past him, was about to step into the bathroom.<br>"_Ms. Hammond."_

She froze.

* * *

><p>An hour later, Aisling, Nathan, Philip and the two and a half platoons of IMC soldiers were on the streets in plainclothes, struggling through the piercing heat. Venice 3 was so close to Solvenice that, despite Venice 3's thin atmosphere, the temperature still regularly hit 35 degrees Celsius (Author's note: 0 degrees Celsius is freezing, 100 degrees Celsius is boiling. 10 degrees Celsius is a cold day, and, where I live, 30 degrees Celsius is a hot day. 40 degrees Celsius is approaching Earth's highest natural temperature. 37.5 degrees Celsius is the average human's core body temperature and it makes for a <em>sweltering <em>hot day. Think, "damn, we might have to shut down schools for the day or else students might get heatstroke" level hot.).

The thin atmosphere made dehydration especially dangerous. Water evaporated at a lower temperature from normal. Sweat would evaporate easier and at a lower temperature, forcing people to consume more water than normal to keep themselves cool. This turned out to be the reason for the salty water at breakfast – if they hadn't have had salts and minerals with the water they would have lost all their salts through their sweat. Consuming salts and minerals at meal times meant they could drink unsalted water through the day.

"Ugh," groaned Philip as he emptied his water-bottle for the third time. "I'm out again."

"Pilots, do you seen any water fountains around?" asked Officer Bryan Macross over his radio. "Yet another empty bottle."

Daniek sighed from a nearby rooftop. "Affirmative, three hundred metres, two o'clock. Over."  
>"Thanks. We're sending someone over to fill his bottle up. Keep an eye on him, please. Over."<p>

(Author's note: Wilco is short for Will Comply. Means "I will comply with the orders you have given me."

"Wilco. And, no problem. It's what I'm here for."  
>"That bloody sun, though..."<br>"You think _you've _got it hard? I'm in a cloaking suit!"  
>"Aren't the suits cooled?"<br>"Grunt rumor. Yes, they're cooled, but only while the cloaking is turned off. If you turn your cloaking on the suit starts insulating you to prevent thermal scanners from detecting you. It gets hot real quick."  
>"But not that qui-"<br>"Imagine running around in a sub-zero suit."  
>"Oh. Shit."<br>"Yeah."

"Quiet on the radio," said Jaggerjack, annoyed. "Keep the channel clear unless it's an emergency. Out."

* * *

><p>"How do you know?" Sophia whispered to the man behind her.<p>

"That's a secret," he yawned.  
>"It's my secret."<br>"It's safe with me."  
>"No, it's not," she hissed, spinning around, slamming and then pinning him to the wall.<p>

"Woah," he said, eyebrow raised slightly. "You're a lot different when you're out of character."

"You tell me right this instant how you found out."

"Different accent, more aggressive..."

"How did you find out?" she snarled.  
>"Look, I'm not going to tell you. I <em>can't<em>. But rest assured, nobody else is going to find out, either by me or by the way I found out."  
>"I used a fake name, a fake age, I spoke with the accent. How can you be so sur-"<br>"Because I covered your tracks for you."  
>"Wel – wait, what?<p>

"I covered your tracks for you. I know you want to stay hidden; you signed up for this voyage with a fake name. And from what I'd seen of you in basic training you seemed like a nice enough kid. I don't know why you're hiding, _Sophia Louise Hammond_, but there are three things you need to know:

One, that you aren't being careful enough,  
>Two, you can never be too careful,<br>and Three, I am your ally. I'll be keeping an eye on you. If you need anything, let me know."

She stood in silence for a moment, then,

"You're going to help me?"  
>"See, there it is. That's your normal accent."<br>"Yeah. This is how I normally speak."  
>"Well, yes. I'm going to help you. I have no reason not to, right?"<p>

"Thank you, George." A single tear rolled out of the side of her eye. It had been too long since the last time someone who knew her true identity had been kind to her.  
>"My pleasure."<p>

* * *

><p>The Venice system sat in the middle of six other systems - Carlyle, Yuma, and Nexus were closest, with jump times of around 100 hours for a large enough shuttle while Leviathan, Hephaestus and Haven all stayed 350 hours away. The way that the six systems were all positioned <em>relatively <em>closely around the Venice system ensured that the Venice system was a trading hub. It's low gravity ensured that ships could unload their goods without having to burn lots of fuel to move it between ships or to the ground, and it's proximity to Carlyle meant that ships could easily refuel cheaply.

United Planetary Shipping had perfected the art of intersystem shipping. UPS freighters would loop around Solvenice, Solcarlyle, one of the other aforementioned nearby systems, then back to Solvenice again. Because their ships only ever slingshot themselves from star to star, they didn't ever stop and thus didn't ever have to refuel their engines, just their warp drives. Customers would request shipping for their items and the next UPS ship would drop out of warp for half an hour while the freight was loaded before re-engaging its' enormous warp drives again. After all, the mass of a large warp drive wasn't an issue if you didn't need to burn extra fuel to accelerate it.

It was only 8:00 AM, but the markets of Alpha were already hot and bustling. The low gravity encouraged the merchants to decorate their stalls with eye-catching signs towering high into the sky and the thin atmosphere forced potential buyers _of_ said merchandise to walk slowly through the market.

Crossguard glanced at the stall in front of him through his sunglasses, tried to ignore all the bright colours and noise around him. If the atmospheric pressure had been normal this would have been deafening but due to the thin air the sounds of the market sounded muffled – almost blurred together – until you got close to what was making the noise.

"Excuse me," he asked, getting the shopkeepers' attention, "Aren't guns illegal at Alpha?"

The man smiled a gold-toothed grin. "Aye. Ye have teh ave a license teh buy one, an' then I wrap it up in a special box. Teh box'll tell meh if yeh open it, lad. Yeh can buy a gun, if yeh want, but I'll kno if yeh try teh use it."

"I see. How much?"  
>"50 credits, Sir."<p>

"They're screwing team E over," reported Hilt from an alleyway 100 metres (Author's note: a quick stroll, for those readers who use the imperial system) away. "I can buy a carbine here for 50 credits."

"Holy shit," swore Ashley Stone from orbit. "You serious?"  
>"Yes, Ma'am."<br>"Jeez. Jzaque is trying to sell them for 150."  
>"Your orders please, Ma'am."<br>"Right. Proceed as we planned. Find unmarked probes, send them to Demeter, Outpost 207 and Brink, then lie low until extraction. If those probes are traced back to us, we're screwed."  
>"Copy that, Ma'am. Hilt out."<p>

* * *

><p>Stone sighed. "Captain, we're getting screwed over by the shiphoarder."<p>

"Really?" Soryuu raised her eyebrows.

"By 300%, which is _way_ too much. We won't be able to help the IMC forces on the frontier at all if everything is this expensive. I'm going to tell them to leave."  
>"That Jzaque isn't going to be happy."<p>

"No, Captain. He probably planned to get rich quick off us, and now he's going to be in debt to some bank for the loans for his temporary mansion."

"Too bad. Proceed as you see fit, Mission specialist."

Stone pushed a button on her console.

"George, Stone here."

"Copy that.

"Long message. B team is at the markets right now, they say that Lucian is screwing you guys over with prices. He's got you in his mansion, taking your orders for our merchandise and then selling it to you with a ridiculous surcharge. Over."  
>"Roger so far."<p>

Stone gave a brief pause to wait for any important messages to come through on the radio channel before continuing. "I've found a suitable inn for you guys to stay at. Get your team's bags packed and your soldiers to conceal their weapons, then move out to a location I'm about to disclose. You'll be buying direct from the markets from now on. Over."  
>"Awaiting coordinates, Roger so far."<p>

Stone paused again, then, "31 degrees, 29 minutes, 22.2448 seconds north, 6 degrees, 24 minutes, 53.5813 seconds west. Saying again, 31 degrees, 29 minutes, 22.2448 seconds north, 6 degrees, 24 minutes, 53.5813 seconds west. Over."  
>"So, not the same inn as the other teams? Over."<p>

"Negative. I've booked some rooms for your team. Move your bags over there and set up camp. Over."  
>"How do you want us to send the merchandise to you? You want us to buy guns and ammunition and food and fuel. How can we send them up to the Shikinami? Over."<br>"Still working on that, Pilot. We're thinking about using the container accelerator cannon just north of your position. Over."  
>"Wilco with your orders concerning moving the team to the inn. Out."<p>

With that, George put his radio transmitter into his pocket.

_I should tell the team to get ready to move first, Lucian could get angry when I tell him that we're leaving. _

He saw the physicist John in a corridor in front of him.

"Oi, John."  
>The man turned. "Oh, hi, Sir."<br>"Get ready to leave this place. We're going to the markets after all."  
>"Really? Okay then."<p>

An hour later E team was ready to go. There was only one last thing to do.

George knocked on Lucian's door. "Jzaque? You there?"

Jzaque flung the door open. "Indeed, friend! How does the day treat you?"

"Fine. Listen, I've got something to tell you."  
>"Oh? What is it?"<br>"You're screwing us over. That carbine we ordered, the one that you sold us for 150 credits? It goes for 50 at the markets. Same goes for the ammunition and the supplements."  
>"But... the registration!" Jzaque cried, nervously. "The guns in the markets won't be registered! A – aaand the ammunition! Uh... the ammunition costs extra to have its quality checked! Then the-"<br>"Sorry Jzaque. We'll be trying our luck at the markets. Orders from above."

"Wait, please!" he ran out of his room. "I'm begging y-"

And then he tripped over his robes.

"Lets go, E team," George said over the radio.

* * *

><p>"They're gone?"<br>"Yes, Sir. Gone."  
>"Damn. How did they know?"<br>"I'm not sure," Lucian said into a radio, "but I think they had spies in the markets. They are not who they seem."  
>"Odd for a trading ship to send a trading party down in secret."<br>"Indeed, Sir."  
>"You've done well, Lucian. What did you say they purchased?"<br>"A carbine, Sir."  
>"Very well. Thank you for this information, Lucian. You will be rewarded."<p>

The man on the radio turned.

"Follow that trading team," he ordered to a woman behind him. "I want to know where they go and what they buy."  
>"Yes, Sir." The woman faded into the background as if she were wearing a cloaking suit.<p>

"And Bish. Get me the camera feeds of the markets. I want to know the name and face of every person to have purchased a carbine over the last three days. We're going to find that secret trading team."


	16. Samel

Author's note: Well. I thought I'd be finished by chapter 16 :P . Ah well, it's time to write some more.

* * *

><p>Sophia subtly smirked at the soldiers in her squad as they stepped through the sweltering marketplace, sweat slowly oozing from their every pore. She, on the other hand, had spent most of her life on Helios. She was used to this.<p>

Helios was an IMC colony built amidst the core worlds on a small (and thus low-gravity) planet orbiting its sun rather closely. The thin atmosphere brought on by the low-gravity environment barely reduced the sun's glare, resulting in its inhabitants developing heavy tans. The low gravity meant that their spines tended to stretch out further than usual, leaving them incredibly tall. Finally, the thin atmosphere meant that Helians tended to grow stronger lungs than humans living elsewhere. This lead to Helian voices naturally being louder than normal. A person growing up on Helios would physically mature completely differently from a person growing up on, say, Earth.

Richard Hammond the first was a scientist born on Earth. _He_ created Hammond Robotics and helped to invent the Warp and Jump drives. _He_ created the four Legacy drives, _He_ oversaw the creation of the four colony ships, _He_ authorised their three-month voyage to the frontier. When reports came back of incredible wealth and natural resources to be mined, _he_ subsidised colonists' travel costs out of his own pocket.

Then the frontier exploded into Galactic War One (GW1). Creative use of warp drives from both sides kept noncombatants in fear for their lives, no matter where they lived. Two of the Colony ships (the legacy carriers _HMD Austraeus _and _HMD Dauntless__) _survived. The legacy star destroyer _HMD Atlas _was completely obliterated when the separatists destroyed Uranus. The legacy logistics carrier _HMD Dawntreader_ was last seen approaching a gas giant to refuel when it mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. Hammond, overcome with rage at the senseless war created the Titan program, naming the first generation Titan after the legacy star destroyer he had christened with his own hands.

The first generation pilots struck with a force of a magnitude never seen before. The capital ship _HMD Wrath of the __A__ngels_ jumped into a separatist-held system and dropped the Titans. At first, the separatists laughed at the meagre orbital bombardment, then began to collapse in terror as said artillery fire _stood up and began tearing the turrets off their tanks. _The Pilots were the stuff of nightmares, each capable of single-handedly slipping into bases undetected and slaughtering every combatant inside. GW1 ended with the separatists' surrender after the _Wrath of the __Angels _dropped fifty titans onto the separatists' homeworld. The Pilots were the knights, the Titans were their steeds, and Hammond was their king before he died three months after the war ended.

Richard Hammond the second was his eldest child and the heir of Hammond Robotics. He created the Interstellar Manufacturing Corporation, and organised the partnership between the IMC and Hammond Robotics. When he passed away his eldest, Richard Hammond the third inherited Hammond Robotics, who passed it on to his firstborn, Richard Hammond the fourth.

Helios was an IMC colony built amidst the core worlds on a small (and thus low-gravity) planet orbiting its sun rather closely. The thin atmosphere brought on by the low-gravity environment barely reduced the sun's glare, resulting in its inhabitants developing heavy tans. The low gravity meant that their spines tended to stretch out further than usual, leaving them incredibly tall. Finally, the thin atmosphere meant that Helians tended to grow stronger lungs than humans living elsewhere. This lead to Helian voices naturally being louder than normal. A person growing up on Helios would physically mature completely differently from a person growing up on, say, Earth.

If someone from Earth had a child and raised the child on Helios, the child would look very different from the parent. The resemblance would be hard to notice at the least.

If, _purely hypothetically_, Richard Hammond the fourth had fathered an illegitimate daughter, and, if, purely hypothetically, Richard Hammond the fourth wanted to continue the line of firstborn Hammond boys, Helios would be the perfect place to hide the daughter.

The daughter being the true heir of both the IMC and Hammond Robotics.

Sophia Louise Hammond of Helios approached a shopkeeper and asked to buy 10 bags of potatoes.

* * *

><p>"AHA! Gotcha!" roared the second man, grabbing hold of Elizabeth's shoulder. She screamed for a second before he slammed his hand over her mouth.<p>

"No more," the first man puffed. "Stop running. We've got you now. You're with us."

Elizabeth poked her tongue out of her mouth, licked the second man's hand.

"Ew!" said the second man, uncovering her mouth for a second. She screamed and he covered her mouth again.

"STOP THAT YOU DIRTY STREET," he shouted, then a bad word that she thought meant 'female dog.' Then he hit her, and Elizabeth felt her head snap to the side as his fist connected with her cheek. She started to cry.

* * *

><p>"Alright, that's it," Aisling growled into her earpiece. "I don't give a fuck about what you say. <em>I am going to go beat the living shit out of that asshole<em>."  
>"Aisling," said Daniek frantically, "Don't draw attention to us-"<p>

"OI!" she screamed at the man, striding up to him.

* * *

><p>Elizabeth could see, through her tears, a short blonde woman stride up to the second man. The second man laughed.<p>

* * *

><p>Aisling balled her hands into fists, pulled her left hand up to guard her head and reeled back her right fist like a bolt in a crossbow, before releasing it into the man's head like a bolt from a crossbow with the weight of a 50 kilogram adult woman behind it. Felt his head snap backwards before pulling his shoulders with it.<p>

* * *

><p>"Oh boy," muttered Jaggerjack into his earpiece. "I'm in sniping position. Safeties off, fire on my mark. Big one's mine, small one's yours, Daniek. Over."<br>"Wilco, Jack."  
>"So I'm gonna miss out?" asked Rimjob, disappointed.<br>"Sorry, but your LMG isn't accurate enough for this. And it's in orbit."  
>"I could call it down -"<br>"NO."

* * *

><p>He brought his left arm up to his cheek, stumbled backwards a step.<p>

"What the hell?" he mumbled through broken teeth. Spat blood onto the ground.

The short one moved towards her, a knife in hand. He lunged forward, knife sliding through the air just left of her neck. Her left and moved upwards, knocking his elbow, preventing any slashes on the return.

Just because Brink was a core world didn't mean it was free of street fights.

Nathan was running up behind her. Just her and her wingman. Or was she _his_ wingman?

Did it matter?

The tall one shook his head to clear it and suddenly he was charging them.

"I'll take the big one!" Aisling yelled to Nathan. She stepped to the side, fired a left cross, fist darting out to meet the side of his head then back to guard her head.

Would it hurt? Not much. It would make him blink.

She grabbed his collar, dragged his neck to the side, slammed her right fist upwards into the man's gut, crushing his stomach, breaking a rib, winding him.

She pulled her fist back for another strike.

_Ba-dump._

She stumbled backwards, felt her heart.

Adrenaline was one hell of a drug, but she still had to breathe eventually. She doubled over, lungs heaving as the tall man coughed up more blood.

"What's going on here?!" called a voice from afar. "OI! FREEZE! POLICE!"

* * *

><p>"Hold fire," whispered Jaggerjack. "Contact, three o'clock. Over."<br>"I see him," replied Daniek.  
>"Let me take him," pleaded Rimjob. "I'll use my wingman."<br>"Very well, Rimjob. Take the one in the uniform, on my mark. Over."  
>"Wilco. Awaiting mark, out."<p>

* * *

><p>"He," <em>breathe<em>, "punched," _breathe_, "the girl," gasped Aisling through lungs too small for the thin air.

"No," muttered the short man, "he didn't -"  
>"Stap lyin!" screeched a grey haired woman leaning out of a window. "He hit the gurl! I saw et!"<p>

"Yeh! Yeh 'e deed!" roared a dark-haired man leaning out of a door. "I saw eet as weel!"

"Well -" the Police officer said, "Then you two are under arrest. Hands behind your back."

The tall man collapsed onto the ground.

"I may have," _breathe_, "hit him a bit," _breathe_, "hard," Aisling wheezed.

"Mmm," the officer mumbled absent-mindedly. "Doesn't look like they're in much position to resist. I'm going to take these two down to the station, are you three okay?"

_Three?_

"I'm okay," said the girl. The officer crouched down to her height.  
>"How old are you, kid?"<p>

"72 kilohours old."

"What's your name?"  
>"Elizabeth Samel."<p>

Aisling's eyes widened.

* * *

><p>Rimjob burst into laughter. "Well tell me that ain't the find of the century, lads."<br>"It appears that we are in luck," noted Jaggerjack.

* * *

><p>Aisling knelt down towards Elizabeth Samel – she didn't have to go far, Venice 3 had low gravity and this girl had grown taller than children on Brink because of it – and asked, "Elizabeth Samel, does your dad run a shuttle store?"<br>"No. Daddy works at a shuttle Emporlium."  
>"Can you lead us there?<p> 


	17. Menelaus

The shipyard Elizabeth led them to wasn't particularly large – a quarter of a square kilometre, perhaps. It was dusty. It was sandy. It was hot. It had a small concrete shack built just to the entrance. And there was a large shuttle resting in the very centre, metal internals strewn across the ground underneath it.

"Daddy?" Elizabeth called. "Are you there?"

A bang came from the shuttle's bowels. "Elizabeth? Is that you?!"  
>"Daddy!"<p>

She dropped Aisling's hand and sprinted toward the shuttle and only just managed to dodge a tall red-haired man falling out of the cargo hold.  
>"Elizabeth! You're okay!"<br>He scooped her into his arms, squeezed her tight to his chest.  
>"Daddy,.. you don't need to squeeze so hard..."<p>

He put her down on the ground, patted her head. "Sorry. I'm just glad you're okay." He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

"Daddy, this is Aisling."

The man turned to see Aisling walking slowly toward him.

"Who are you? Did you help bring Eliza back?"  
>"She fighted the bad guys," explained Elizabeth. "Her and the boy."<br>"I'm Aisling," Aisling introduced herself. "Pleased to meet you."

The man bowed low.  
>"I will forever be grateful, Ms. Aisling. If there is anything I can do for you – oh, hold on. Julie!"<br>"Hold on, I'm on the phone!" came a yell from the shack. "I think I've got a lead!"  
>"You don't need to look any longer, Elizabeth's here!"<br>"EH?!"

A tall woman sprinted out of the shack. "Who found her?!"  
>"This girl here." Elizabeth's father turned to Aisling. "Look, if there's anything I can do..."<br>"Well, actually..." She paused for a moment, Laughed. "We need a jump shuttle that can carry everyone here. And then another jump shuttle to carry, say – what, 20 cryo pods?"  
>"Seems about right," confirmed Nathan, walking up behind her. "We just don't have the parts and were hoping we could purchase such a shuttle."<p>

Samel's eyes widened. "Marvellous! I have other orders, but I'll push you guys to the top of the list. But I hope you understand you're paying. We're not exactly loaded."  
>Jaggerjack stepped forward, Longbow DMR concealed under his uniform. "We understand, Mr. Samel. We're prepared to cover the costs."<br>Samel smiled. "Well, as luck would have it, I have _three_ small jump shuttles. Stick the cryo pods in one and the rest of you in the other two; you'd have more than enough space."  
>"Fantastic. I'm Jack, by the way." He shook Samel's hand. "When can we have the shuttles by?"<br>"It'll take a few days to get them ready; the chassis are fresh out of the box. I'll have to install the engines, fuel them up and install an AI aboard the computers."  
>"If Aisling, Nathan and Philip helped you, could you get them done quicker?"<p>

Samel frowned. "Well, yes, but it depends on how good they are with a spanner."  
>Jaggerjack smiled. "Engineers fresh from the Yuma system. They're not half bad with mechanical stuff."<br>"Very well then." Samel grinned at the three. "I'll be taking on three apprentices, then! Lets see if we can't get this done in a day."  
>"Uhh..." mumbled Philip, "I'm a physicist, not a mechan-"<br>"Relax!" Jaggerjack thumped him on the back. "You'll do just fine."  
>"Okay-"<p>

Samel turned back to Jaggerjack. "Well, we're going to need fuel and an AI core. Speaking of fuel; what are you going to be using these things for? Cos I could-"  
>"System jumpers. We're looking to jump fast and dirty. Oh yeah, speaking of which, one of the shuttles doesn't need to have a jump drive. We've already got one with us."<br>"Okay then. Well, for system jumping, you'd be looking at either MPD thrusters or chemical rockets – I'm thinking a hybrid or a bi-propellant -"  
>"We'll take the chemical hybrid, please," said Aisling.<br>"Got some experience with them, have you?" asked Samel.  
>"Yeah, we used to put them together back at home."<br>"Very well then, hybrid it is. Jack, if you or one of your friends could go out to the market and get some fuel, oxidizer and an AI core for me, that would be fantastic."

* * *

><p>"Sir. There were twelve carbines purchased within the designated period of time. We have located the shopkeeper who sold a carbine to the most suspicious-looking customer."<p>

"Bring the shopkeeper to the Senate building. I'll be there in a moment."

The man with the radio swept rich red and gold robes onto his back, rose from his chair, and left the building.

* * *

><p>"How about there?" asked Eoin Ireton, pointing towards a store-front that had a sign reading 'Venice &amp; related systems intelligence services', a few hundred metres away. "Look – 'Voted best merchant intelligence service, 3 Venice-years in a row. Low prices, quality intelligence, no questions asked. Sounds exactly what we're looking for. Over."<br>"Copy, Ireton," said Misha from a nearby rooftop, blending in with a chimney pipe, hiding from the blazing sun in it's small shadow. "Your call, I can't see it from here. Over."  
>"We'll do it, Over."<br>"Very vell. Movingk to a pozition to cover you. Out."

Team A was on the hunt for information regarding militia movements over the past three months. So far all of the other information agencies had only been able to supply stock prices and such; archives of the movements of the Militia were apparently hard to come by.

Now Ireton, Baxter and Street were approaching the entrance to one such agency, the rest of Team A scattered through the rest of the CBD looking for digital news archives, infonet cafés – anything they could find to give them extra information on enemy movements. Misha found herself scattered amongst them, ready to provide cover whenever one of the soldiers was about to enter a building.

The procedure of having Misha move about to ensure she could provide covering fire in an emergency was both tedious and necessary. Tedious, because the sun beat down so hard one could almost feel it exerting a force, and necessary, because they were soldiers deep in enemy territory.

Specifically, the CBD. Not far from Alpha's spaceport, the CBD was comprised of small, low buildings made of clay and mortar salvaged from the ground and tall behemoths of steel rising high into the thin sky.

Misha engaged her cloaking device and broke into a sprint along the roof of one such low building, felt the heat from the cloaking device begin roasting her alive. She leaped from the roof of her current building, pulsed her jump-kit's engines, tucked into a roll and disengaged her cloaking device the moment she stopped. Brought her pistol to her eye, ready to fire on any hostiles.

"I'm in pozition. Out."

Ireton, Baxter and Street strode into the building.

"Desk, 12 o'clock," muttered Ireton under his breath. "Secretary."  
>"Good afternoon!" smiled the secretary. "How can we help you?"<br>"We're merchants from New Tokyo," replied Baxter. "We had some trouble getting here, and we're a bit out of the loop. We're looking for all the news of the last... I dunno, three months?" She looked to Ireton as if she wasn't sure of the exact time.  
>"Yeah, around about that."<br>"Well, you've come to the right place!" said the Secretary, and Baxter could see that she was good at smiling. "We're one of the few companies on Venice 3 that makes long term generic archives. Take a look at the sign on the wall, there." She motioned to a poster, indicating how their service worked and how much it would cost. "We let you access our archives and make as many copies as you like. We charge two hundred credits per gigabyte of our information you leave here with. Will that be okay?"  
>"You've got news articles? And current events?"<br>"Absolutely, Sir!" the secretary sang.  
>"Then that will be just fine with us."<p>

* * *

><p>"Captain, we're receiving an incoming transmission from team A. It looks like some news articles, Ma'am."<p>

Soryuu frowned for a moment. "Overwatch, analyse the information that we're receiving and mark the most important points for us. Display the information on the main monitor.

Okay everyone, listen up. Team A just confirmed, Demeter was destroyed by a Militia attack. Aaaand – oh, that's very interesting. Roberts, you should take a look at this."  
>"They completed development of the Spectre mechanical infantry units? Wow. And they've been fighting with those instead?"<br>"Indeed. Looks like we might have half a cha- oh. Shit."  
>"The Militia has been destroying Spectre production facilities. If one more falls, the IMC forces here won't be able to produce a sustainable amount of Spectres."<br>"They're hiding out on Outpost 207 – wow, good guess, Tactician Johnson."  
>The man smiled. "I try."<br>"Nevertheless, we need to get to Outpost 207 as soon as possible, with the biggest army we can."

"Captain?" said Stone. "Team D just found some shuttles. They'll have the first one ready in a day."

* * *

><p>Venice 3 was governed by the Venice Senate, an assembly of twelve politicians who argued for and against various motions regarding the planet. They met in the Senate building, a glorious pillar of shining steel rising high into the air.<p>

Beneath the Senate building, unbeknownst to the other 11 senators, a shopkeeper sobbed.  
>"Please! I don't know anything, I swear!"<p>

The man with the radio sighed, shook his head. "But," he said, biting the end of his finger out of habit and then pointing it at the man in shackles, "I _need_ to know who he was." He frowned, stood up, folded his arms. "Speaking of which, do you know who I am?"  
>"N-no..?"<br>The man with the radio closed his eyes in mock sadness. "Are you serious? I do so much work for this planet and _nobody _has the decency to know who I am?

He leaned in close to the man in shackles, one foot on the dusty ground, one foot on his chair. "I'm Styx Menelaus," he smiled, "fourth seat of the senate."  
>"The senate? Then, you're -"<br>"Shhh," whispered Menelaus. "Yes, you're right. I'm the one who's trying to save us from the IMC scum."

The shopkeeper blinked.

"But they're not even that bad. They're all locked up in that outpost -"  
>"No, no, no. That won't do," muttered Menelaus. "The IMC are not to be trusted. We must <em>eradicate <em>them. Don't you agree?"  
>"Well -"<br>Menelaus sighed. "Wrong answer. Jason, whip him some more."  
>"Yes, Sir," said a tall, muscular man with an enormous reel of red-stained leather.<p>

"No, ple- AUUUGHHHAAAAAAAAAA!"

Menelaus rolled his eyes. "That's enough, Jason. Look, shopkeep, all I want is for you to tell me anything you can about the man you sold that carbine to."  
>"Is, he IMC?" the shopkeeper asked between gasps and groans of pain.<br>"Yes. No. We're not sure." Menelaus turned around. "But that ship that jumped in sent a trading team to one of my agents and somehow got outside information. That's suspicious in itself." He whiled around. "SO START REMEMBERING THINGS! Details, ANYTHING THAT COULD HELP US FIND THAT MAN!"  
>"I've told you everything I know! Black hair, brown eyes, black cloak, large purse of cash!"<br>"And I don't know anything!" the shopkeeper cried. "Please, believe me. I would have told you by now. Just... give me some truth serum. Ask me whatever you want! I just want to go home!"

Menelaus groaned. "But the truth serum is no _fun_," he whined. "Alright, Jason-

At this point, Menelaus' personal communicator began beeping.  
>"Hold on, I've got a call. Shut up everyone. Hello?"<p>

"Sir..."  
>"Oh, for fuck's sake. Did you idiots get arrested again?"<br>"Yes..."  
>"What were you doing? I asked you to collect some <em>debts<em>, not make my job any harder."  
>"Well... this couple wouldn't pay up, so we took their daughter as compensation. And then she was struggling, and -"<br>"_Did you hit the bitch in public?_"  
>"Yes, Sir."<br>"Honestly." Menelaus rolled his eyes. "Fine. Put me over to the police chief."

He heard chatter on the other end of the comms line.

"Yeah, this is Styx Menelaus," Menelaus said lazily. "These two men were acting under my jurisdiction, blah blah blah. Let them go, will ya?

What?

Look, either you let them go now and you get the resource consent you've been wanting, or you make me come down there in person, you _still_ have to let them go, _and_ you lose your job... and your son's application for schooling is rejected. Happy?

That's what I thought. All hail the Militia, keep up the good work." Menelaus ended the call. Grinned at the shopkeeper who withered like a flower trying to grow under Solvenices' blaze.

"Now, where were we?"

* * *

><p>"Hmm," murmured Soryuu from the bunk in the bridgewomans' quarters, reading through the information that Team A had purchased.<p>

"What?" yawned a communications technician.  
>"A lot has changed in three months. Demeter was destroyed almost exactly three months ago – so, pretty much exactly when we left Brink. Oh – wow, the frontier IMC finished their Spyglass AI, which is now the Vice Admiral of their fleet. Did Marcus get promoted Admira -" She stopped, confused.<p>

Surely her eyes weren't working, surely the information was false.

All she could say was, "Oh."


	18. The Militia

"We're being followed. Over."  
>"Oh. Bearing?"<br>"Black skin, one point nine metres tall. I think he's African with a little bit of Asian in him too. Light green jacket. Over.  
>"I see him," said Hilt. "Over."<br>"Same," said Crossguard. "Over."  
>"If he's near you, he won't be near us," said Gauntlet. "Over."<br>"We'll be careful, though," added Cornerstone. "There may be someone following us. Over."  
>"Good. Keep your eyes peeled, gentlemen," advised Bruce. "Out."<p>

* * *

><p>"Is this the man who purchased a carbine from you?" asked Menelaus, waving a printed photograph in front of the shopkeeper's face.<br>"Ye – yes, it is," the exhausted man replied.

Menelaus spun on one foot, flipped open his communicator.  
>"That's them. Continue tailing them. I want to what the <em>Shikinami<em> is _really _doing as soon as possible."

* * *

><p>Aisling stepped backwards, wiped the sweat from her forehead, admired the shuttle.<p>

She was shaped like a chisel, sloped front to allow it to slide through the air when it was in an atmosphere. Two large mass drivers sat on swivels at the back, capable of pivoting downwards and firing for hovering or vertical take-offs. The other two mass drivers sat just underneath the front of the shuttle, ready for a vertical take off, but able to move to the sides to assist the other mass drivers to accelerate the shuttle forwards if necessary.

"Oi! We're not done yet!" called Mr. Samel from deep inside.

She rolled her eyes. Mr. Samel was a good father, an excellent trader and knew his way around a shuttle like nobody she'd ever seen – but he'd worked them like donkeys over the last three hours. It impressed and slightly terrified her that they'd managed to install four engines in that time – if everyone on Venice 3 worked at this rate, the mechanics on Brink would be out of a job. If it weren't for the enormous distance between the core and the frontier.

"Coming!" she called, grabbing her spanner. "What now?"  
>"Now we're installing the chairs. Each shuttle will seat 35, is that okay?"<br>"Yeah, but this first one is gonna have cryopods instead, remember?"  
>"Oh yeah, that's right. In that case, we might have a break for lunch now."<p>

Aisling could actually hear the sighs of relief from Nathan and Philip.

"Aisling!" squealed a voice behind her.

"Hello, Eliza!" laughed Aisling. She ruffled the smaller (although, not by much) girl's head. "How's it going?"

The girl's smile was infectious, intoxicating. "Great! I helped mummy move the furniture out of our house today!"

After Elizabeth had been kidnapped the family had decided to move closer to the shuttle emporium that Mr. Samel owned. The new house was apparently smaller than the old, and further away from the CBD, but it meant that Mr. Samel could walk to work in a few minutes.

"Speaking of which, here comes the truck now!" said Aisling, pointing at a light green van headed toward the shuttle emporium.

It pulled to a halt, people in the passenger seats jumped out.

_It was the men from earlier._

One, sticking plasters covering his face, the other, arm in a cast. They limped slowly towards Aisling and Elizabeth.

Recognition darted over their faces. One turned to the other. A heated discussion. One of them pointed at Aisling. They stopped, stared at her, and she glared back.

They pulled Hammond P2011 semi-automatic handguns out of their pockets, trained them on her, continued their slow limp as she stared defiantly toward them.

"Get behind me, Elizabeth," she whispered.

"SAMEL!" the tall one roared. "Where are you?!"  
>"Right here," Mr. Samel said, striding up to them.<p>

A punch to his jaw sent him groundwards.

"Money's overdue, Samel," the tall one spat. "Maybe we should just kill ya now."  
>"No, please, I-"<p>

The short man brought his heel down on Mr. Samel's leg and he screamed.

"You ever gonna pay it back?"  
>"I HAVE THE MONEY!" Samel screamed. "I have the money now, okay?!"<p>

The men stepped back, surprised. "What?"  
>"I just got a client, okay?! They wanted three shuttles and paid in advance," Mr. Samel panted. "So, I've got your money now! Let me go get it!"<p>

He hauled himself up onto two feet and the men followed him into the emporium's shack, glaring at Aisling as they went. She contemplated drawing her Smart Pistol, killing the two right here. But Samel seemed to have things under control, and she didn't want to compromise his safety.

A few silent minutes later, the men left the shack with an envelope in the tall one's hands. He glared at Aisling as he passed.

"Try anything like that again," he said, through a mouth covered with bandages, "and you're dead. Understand?" He pointed a finger gun at her head.

She didn't answer, just kept staring for a few seconds, then whirled around to face Mr. Samel.

"What on earth -"

He sighed. "Alright, guys, come inside. I'll explain everything over lunch."

* * *

><p>"Mr Menelaus?" the short man asked over his communicator. "He - he had the money for the taxes this time."<br>"And you've got it?"  
>"Yes, Sir."<br>"Excellent." Menelaus inhaled a sharp breath that whistled over his canines. "Its good that you two were finally useful for something. But next time, you should have asked for the money first, rather than tried to kidnap someone or steal the money."  
>"Understood, Sir."<br>"Alright, begone with you. Go collect somebody else's' taxes. I'm busy."

The communicator switched off in Menelaus's hands and he tossed it into a nearby rubbish bin.

_Screw recharging it. After today, I'll buy another. _

He straightened his robes, took a deep breath, and strode into the Senate.

* * *

><p>"Who were those guys?" Aisling asked, a sandwich on a plate in front of her. Fresh-from-the-oven bread, spread with hummus and G.E. Ham. Much like the food at Brink, except brink used flavoured tofu and G.E. mold instead of hummus.<p>

She took a bite. _Delicious._

"Oh, and do you mind if I switch my communicator on? I'd like Jack to be able to hear this."

"No, it's fine. Go ahead."

Jaggerjack and half of the IMC soldiers were still out in the markets looking for parts and cheap fuel because they weren't needed to help put the shuttles together.

"They were Menelaus's lackeys," began Mr. Samel, as his wife, daughter, Nathan and Philip began to tuck into the food. "He was a rich man once; before those IMC thieves showed up. Told everyone to bugger off because the fractures from the fuel depot they'd be building would make it unsafe. He moved over here to Venice 3 all annoyed at the IMC, bumped shoulders with some high-ranking Militia officers, and now he's a senator of Venice 3. Next thing you know, he's introduced the military tax. He says he's using it to protect our planet; but the thing is he's just sending it all off to the Militia. How that protects us, I don't know."  
>"So," began Nathan, who'd somehow finished his sandwich already, "the men who came around earlier -"<br>"Yeah. The tax collectors. They'll do anything to get you to pay the bloody military tax. I didn't agree with the idea of the tax, so I tried to keep the money." He sighed. "And then they tried to take Elizabeth, huh? Well, I won't do that again."

"So... the _Militia_ kidnapped your daughter?!" asked Aisling incredulously. "Back on the Yuma system everyone thought they were the good guys."  
>"Heh. Well, they want to get rid of the IMC, so there's that - but they're doing it the wrong way. War is never a good solution to any problem. And whose money do they finance their war with?"<br>"Yours?"  
>"Yep."<br>"And they can just... do what they like?"  
>"Why not?" shrugged Samel. "Menelaus is a senator. He makes up the rules around here."<p>

* * *

><p>A man in a light green jacket tailed the man who purchased the carbine. He'd been ordered to follow them, to see if they did anything suspicious.<p>

He wasn't particularly good at this. He wasn't conspicuous enough. He'd been careless when rounding corners, failed to blend into the background when the man who purchased the carbine had turned around. To put it simply, he was sloppy.

Which was the exact reason why Zeta had chosen him. _She_ was the one who'd been given the original order to follow the man who had purchased the carbine. So she'd told the man in the light green jacket to follow the man who had purchased the carbine, and hung back much further away to see what happened.

Lo and behold, there wasn't just one of the men. There were four of them, all dressed in the same mottled colours, all moving in the general direction but a few hundred metres apart. These men were not simple traders; they were professionals.

But what really piqued Zeta's interest was the fifth man. The man who had been leaping from building to building, almost as if he was covering the other four. As if their mission was so important that these four had to have a fifth man babysit them.

_Now this, _she thought, jump-kit flaring as she followed them across the rooftops, _could be interesting._


	19. Overwatch

I met one of my readers IRL. The level of encouragement was so damn high, I pulled 3000 words out of my ass for this chapter. Enjoy.

Also, I now have a proof reader.

Mahz, you da real mvp.

* * *

><p>The sun rose over the horizon on the Shikinami's third day around Solvenice to find that the markets had already opened without it. It began to warm the small planet, heating the air back to its usual sweltering temperature.<p>

Then the unusual happened - five _unfathomably _large warp signatures blinded every single person looking to the sky.

This wasn't a single ship. This was a fleet warping in at medium to low speed, darkening the sun as it did. The fleet was still a few hours away at the least - but it still scared the living shit out of Sophia, knowing that such an enormous force would soon arrive at Solvenice.

The brightness of a warp signature was proportional to the brightness of the engines propelling the warp drive and amount of time the light from said engines had to condense due to the warp drives. The size of the flashes were dependant on the cross-sectional area of the space that the warp drives condensed in front of it. The duration of the warp signature depended on the amount of time the engines had been burning for.

A shuttle's small warp drive would condense space in a thin tunnel in front of it, a tunnel of radius only just wider than the shuttle itself. The size of its' warp signature would therefore be only just larger than the shuttle itself, the brightness and duration of the signature gave away the duration of the shuttle's trip and the power of its' warp drive. Similarly, a battleship or logistics cruiser's warp drives would give off a thick, wide warp signature.

These warp signatures weren't just wide. The multiple flashes within each indicated that there were around four cruisers, another four logistics cruisers, some kind of battleship and a veritable _swarm_ of destroyers, frigates and corvettes.

"Sophia!"

George grabbed her hand, pulling her back into reality.

She dragged her dulled eyes away from the sky. "What is it?"  
>"We've got to get you out of here. Come with me, I'm sending you straight up to the Shikinami."<p>

* * *

><p>Alarms blared through the <em>Shikinami's<em> bridge.

"What the hell is that?" asked Soryuu. "And why the hell didn't we get a warning about it?"  
>"Short range jump, Captain," answered Johnson. "Nobody knew they were coming before now. They jumped in from just past Solvenice."<br>"Sheit. Are they hostiles?"

"Well, it's not going to be friendlies, is it?" the signature analyst said sarcastically.  
>"That's no way to speak to your superior," said Tactician Johnson.<p>

Soryuu sighed, internally chastised herself for being so idiotic. "No, he's right. That's got to be a Militia fleet."

"The question is," mused Roberts, "where have they been? And why are they coming here?"

"Receiving evac requests for one of the civilians on the ground," called the communications technician.

Soryuu looked awkwardly at Roberts. "What do you think, captain? We kinda need her on the ground."  
>"<em>Vice <em>Captain," Roberts corrected with a smile. "And there's no question about it. We are the IMC, we protect our civilian crew at all costs or we lose our reputation."

"But…"  
>"You are the captain, Nina, and it's your choice to make. But keep in mind the consequences that would arise, should this civilain on the ground be harmed."<br>Soryuu nodded. "Yes, yes. Very well. Ashley!"

"Yes, Captain?"  
>"Prepare a ship for Sophia to come to us and change team E's plan. Also, I want an evac solution ready for all the remaining civilian crew of this ship. How many do we have aboard?"<br>"A few - a hundred or so?"

"We need a way to get them to safety if anything goes wrong. I want you to find a way to evac our crew if we're targeted by the enemy fleet. Okay?"

Stone sighed. "Yes, Captain."

* * *

><p>Stone returned to her quarters within the centrifuge. She appreciated the 'gravity' the spinning cylinder gave, but that didn't stop her from angrily kicking the wall. <em>I'm the only bloody mission specialist aboard the whole damn ship and that bitch wants me to do everything! Who does she think I am, superman?<em>

She'd been planning to enjoy herself for three days now, the pressure and desire building up inside her, and just as she thought she might get some time to herself bloody Soryuu gave her more work to do. She lay back on her bed, snuggled up under the covers, and grabbed her tablet.

"Overwatch, get me the coordinator."

A program appeared on the display in front of her.

* * *

><p>"Now, who knows how to install an AI?" asked Samel. He was presented with three blank faces.<p>

"Oh, come on. You claim to be engineers?"  
>"In our defence, we only ever… well, made the things that were ordered," explained Nathan. "Installing AI's and operating systems was always done by someone else."<p>

"Yeah," said Aisling, backing him up. "For some reason the rich guys like to watch their fancy new Cadrillac boot up for the first time."  
>"Cadillac," mumbled Philip.<p>

Samel sighed. "Alright then, let me show you how it's done.

He pulled the manual release lever on the side of the shuttle and a loading ramp dropped down underneath the shuttle.

"All aboard!"

(Author's note: The following description uses 'up', 'down', etcetera. 'Up' and 'down' are relative in space. Here, 'down' means towards the rearmost engines and 'up' means 'the end that points towards where you're trying to go for the first half of your journey' – keeping in mind that the shuttle has to turn around halfway to decelerate. It may help to imagine the shuttle on a launch pad, with its rockets downwards.)

The shuttle, like all starships, was built like a skyscraper. The thrust from the shuttle's engines accelerate the starship forward, producing a gravity-like effect that seems to pull the occupants of the shuttle down (Author's note: towards the engines). Keeping this gravitational effect in mind, Samel, Aisling, Nathan and Philip had made the crewing area two floors tall, with ladders connecting each. These two floors were filled with power ports to supply electricity from the reactor to the 20 cryo pods that the mechanics aboard the Shikinami would install and the 20 crew members aboard would ride to Carlyle in.

Directly above the two floors were the internal computers, computer terminals and the nuclear reactor. A pilot could control the shuttle from the room above them, accessible via a small ladder.

Just below the two floors was the cheapest jump drive they could get their hands on. The Shikinami was going to replace the jump drive, anyway, as well as the engines, so the mechanics, much to Samels' surprise, had insisted upon purchasing a civilian in-atmosphere jump drive, capable of no more than x4 spatial compression.

Around the warp drive was an empty cavern – another thing that baffled Samel. He didn't know that it was to be used to store Jenni's Stryder–class titan, ready for deployment when the shuttle dropped into orbit around Carlyle.

Beside the two floors of crewing space were two of the mass drivers on hinges just off the hull of the shuttle. They'd rotate depending on the shuttle's needs – towards a celestial body, for vertical take-offs and hovering, or 'downward' towards the other two thrusters – located at the very rear of the ship just behind the titan storage space – to assist them.

Currently the shuttle was lying sideways, engines pointed toward the ground (Author's note: and thus, not directly towards the rear of the shuttle. The four mass drivers are pointed 'down' relative to Venice 3 and sideways relative to the shuttle.), ready to hover upwards and then launch – if it had an AI installed that could pilot it.

Samel lead them through the shuttle they'd built over the last three days to the computers in the highest floor, across tilted walls and through sideways staircases.

"Well, this is the computer," said Samel. "Who's got the AI?"

Philip handed him a small tube filled with a clear liquid that the _Shikinami_ had dropped to them the previous night. Samel inserted said tube into a suitably-sized port in the computer console.

"Everyone holding on tight?"  
>"What?!" cried Philip.<p>

"Nah, just messing with you." Samel flicked open a protective case to reveal a switch.

"Master computer power, hence the protective case. Gotta make sure it's not bumped."

He flipped the switch and the display flickered blue.

"There we go," Samel murmured. "She's trying to boot now… but she doesn't have anything installed, does she?" He turned to the three behind him. "Watch this," he said. "First you wait for it to load it's interface drivers - look, it's done with that - and then you say the magic words." He turned back to the computer. "Computer, boot from DNA Mass Storage drive 1."

The computer displayed; "booting from DNA drive 1. DNA Mass Storage drive 1 online. DNAMS tube detected. Reading nucleotides."

The tube bubbled softly as enzymes within the liquid began to read the DNA floating inside, literally using the DNA like a hard drive.

"And... there we go," said Samel proudly. "The DNA in the tube'll be read by the DNAMS and installed on the ol' quantum computer here."

The computer displayed, "Writing to internal DNAMS storage: 37% complete. 43% complete."

"It's bloody quick," Nathan commented. "And that's a whole AI?"  
>"DNA storage <em>is<em> bloody quick; and you guys are using an outdated AI. Hell, I'm surprised it's taking this long," replied Samel.

"Our AI is outdated?"  
>"Well. I mean, I'm a shuttle man, so I'm not the right person to ask. There's nothing wrong with the Overwatch system - well, aside from the lack of a vocal output module. It's old IMC tech, but it still works wonderfully. Most other AI's are built off Overwatch code. It's just… old, y'know?"<br>"What are people using nowadays?"  
>"Well, someone found a leak of the IMC's Spyglass AI, so some people are trying that out. It's pretty difficult to install, though, cos the bloody thing has the desire to serve the IMC ingrained deep within its goals cache."<p>

The computer displayed, "Writing to internal DNAMS storage: competed. Installing AI. 10% completed. 54% completed. 99% completed. 99% completed. 99% completed. Installation completed. The computer will now reboot."

The display flickered black, then blue, then displayed the Overwatch logo - an O, with an iris in the centre of it, followed by the letters verwatch.

The computer displayed, "Overwatch AI online. Detecting that this is this Overwatch unit's first time online. Scanning for interface devices… installing drivers for interface devices… complete. You can now speak to this Overwatch unit."

"Overwatch," said Samel, "run a full scan for all connected devices. Find reactors, chemical thrusters, warp drives, everything. When you're done, install drivers for them all. Then call my communicator.

The computer displayed, "Acknowledged. Scanning… 1% complete."

"Alright!" smiled Samel. "We're done here - Overwatch'll finish automatically. So, time to start on the second shuttle, right? You said you needed three?"

Aisling groaned.

* * *

><p>Zeta stalked the fifth man over the rooftops. She didn't know why <em>her client <em>was interested in him - apparently he'd purchased a carbine from someone, which wasn't _that_ illegal - but _she was_ interested. This man could leap from rooftop to rooftop almost as fast as she could. And he definitely wasn't a PI trailing them like she was - every time he spoke into his communicator, one of the four men on the ground would raise a hand to their own communicator and say a few words. No, this man was protecting them.

_Probably from people like me,_ she thought.

She recognised the buildings nearby, realised that they were headed for one of the more dodgy parts of town.

Zeta frowned. This had been getting exciting. _Don't tell me they're here for whores and moonshine._

She knew the lengths some men took to get away from their wives. It wasn't uncommon for wives to hire private investigators to tail their husbands if they were worried about being cheated on. _Hell, I've been hired for that a few times._ And it wouldn't be uncommon for cheating husbands to find some other cheating husbands online, split the cost of their _own_ PI and tell them to look out for other PI's.

Now they were in the red-light district and despite her cloaking device Zeta still felt out of place. The fifth man was nowhere to be seen, likely hiding somewhere in the shadows, on the lookout for people like Zeta.

Her cloaking device couldn't last forever. She felt her suit being to heat up. _Time for a change of plan. _ She ducked into a building with an XXX sign above the entrance, found a bathroom that wasn't too filthy. Removed her helmet and unzipped the front of her armour a little, exposing a hint of cleavage. _When in whoreland, look like a whore. _

She found the original four men in front of her, spotted the fifth lurking in a corner, cooling his cloaking device. Sauntered straight past without him even noticing.

And then the interesting part happened. The four men ducked down an alleyway, and were now moving _away _from the red-light district. She slunk away from the alley entrance, pounced on a man wearing a black trenchcoat, pushed him into a nook a few metres away.

"What have you got under there, darling?" she purred.  
>"Uhh..." the man mumbled as a stupid smile began to spread across his face.<p>

The edge of her electric katana pushed up against his neck, indicating that she was not in fact referencing the organ in his undergarments but rather the bags he had concealed under his coat. He stopped grinning abruptly.

"Please don't hurt me!" he squeaked. "I've got some psychdust! You can take it all!"

"I appreciate the gesture, but I only need one."

She tore a bag from his grasp, sheathed her katana, ripped open the bag and scattered the contents of the flour-like powder near the entrance of the alleyway before donning her helmet once again, slinking into the shadows nearby. The fifth man's cloaking device might hide his body and heat signature – but it wouldn't let him phase through the faint cloud of psychedelics that hovered by the alleyway entrance.

A minute later, the dust was disturbed by something invisible. A cat-like grin crept across her face. She activated her own cloaking device and began to follow the phantom - its every move given away by the powdered drugs that trailed off its body.

They were headed toward the black market.

* * *

><p>"Get her to the emergency room, now!" roared a nurse. "She's losing blood!"<p>

"ID?" asked a medic, soaring through the _Shikinami's_ titan hangar with a low-g stretcher in one hand.

"Samantha Roarke! Civilian field engineer, born on Brink. Blood type B!"

"What did she do?" the medic asked as the nurse helped him strap Samantha into the stretcher and attach a low-concentrate stim drip. Her eyes flew open as a surge of adrenaline flooded her veins, hormones forcing her bone marrow to double its blood production. The medic and the nurse seemed to be moving in slow motion.

A dull pain throbbed through her leg and she remembered what had happened. The stryder's connection to its calf hydraulics had been defective, and she'd applied a voltage to the wrong node of the motor drivers…

She sunk into darkness.

* * *

><p>"Alert from the medical bay, Ms. Stone," Overwatch displayed on Ashley's screen.<p>

"Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "What is it now?"

"Field engineer Samantha Roarke has been seriously injured in an accident and will be unable to participate in her mission to Carlyle."

Stone blinked.

"Oh, for fucks' sake."

* * *

><p>Just as she was stepping aboard the ground to orbital shuttle in Alpha's spaceport, Sophia's communicator buzzed.<p>

"Yeah?"  
>"How would you like to go to Carlyle?" asked the voice of Ashley Stone.<p>

Sophia thought for a moment.

_You left Helios to explore, not to sit on a ship in perfect safety, _said the devil on her shoulder.

_You could actually die at Carlyle_, countered the angel.

_You could 'actually die' anywhere on the frontier, _smirked the devil._ Now that the Militia have control, anyway. And you're not exactly inconspicuous on a ship three and a half kilometres long._

_You're the true heir to Hammond Robotics! You have a duty to-_

The devil scoffed. _A duty? Your father practically disowned you, Soph! Why should you care about him – or anyone else, for that matter! Go and see the world!_

She could hear George speaking in her ear. _We've got to get you out of here._

_He wanted you to be safe, Sophia!_ Her angel pleaded. _Just... stay aboard the Shikinami! Stay safe! You won't see any more of the world if you're dead!"_

_What is living without the possibility of dying?_ Countered her devil.

And then the second angel showed up, took her seat beside the devil. _I'm not agreeing with his arguments, Soph, but these people need your help._

_And it's not her job to help them! Cried the second _devil, who put his arm around the first angel. _It's not your problem! Screw these guys! Someone else can go to Carlyle. _

_You wouldn't want to tarnish your hands with the sin of stealing, would you?_ The first angel said hopefully while trying to shrug the second devil's arm off.

_It doesn't matter! _ Cried the first devil. _She's stealing from a frontier fuel station; they're probably in kahoots with the Militia!_

_She's doing it for the peace of the frontier!_ Cried the second angel.

_Fuck it, _Sophia thought. _I'm on the frontier here. Fuck Dad, fuck Mum, fuck Hammond fucking robotics. I'm going to go steal some fuel from Carlyle. These people are my family now, and they need my help._

"Yeah, why not," coolly replied Sophia. "Why do you need me?"  
>"The field engineer we had enlisted on the team had an accident with a Titan and can't go any more. We were worried that it would be just Bonerhead, till we heard you could do it."<br>"Well, hook me up. When do we leave?"  
>"In 14 hours. Team D just finished making the first of our shuttles."<br>"Then I'll see you soon for some kind of briefing?"  
>"Yeah. Thanks a million, Sophia."<p> 


	20. The black market bar

Sorry for the slow updates. My proof readers and I all have exams coming up so it's been slow writing this. The next chapter should come out in about five days' time.

* * *

><p>The more Zeta followed the five men, the stranger their actions had become. The trip to the red-light district was normal enough, but the men had <em>left <em>the district without purchasing any such services. They _seemed _to be making their way towards the black market - a courtyard guarded by private security contractors, used to discretely _order_ illicit goods from suppliers throughout the city. Venice 3's police force knew about its existence - but because it was only a place for _ordering_ goods, they'd never managed to _find_ anything there to justify an arrest of the people who ran the market.

If the five men were headed there they obviously had never been there before because they'd just passed three shortcuts. _And that's a fourth,_ she thought, carefully stalking the men, stopping every few seconds to allow the fifth man to recharge his cloaking device and re-cloak. _He must think he's doing a good job,_ Zeta thought.

She began to absent-mindedly brush her fingers over her Electromagnetic Displacement Field generator, or EDF for short. According to the heads-up display contained within her visor, it was currently turned off. She put it into standby mode, just to be safe, noted that the device's capacitors were beginning to charge. A cautious enemy could spot her on an electromagnetic scanner by spotting the electromagnetic fields that the charging wires would be creating around themselves by the sheer nature of the electric current running through them.

The EDF generator could save her life if someone tried to shoot her - _if_ it were powered on. But doing so would fill the air in front of her with a thin layer of plasma, suspended in position by the magnets strapped to her shoulder. It would in no way be inconspicuous, and she'd been hired by Menelaus to be inconspicuous.

The four visible men and the one invisible man ahead of her stopped. Zeta stopped twenty metres behind them, grinned underneath her visor.  
>"Plus, the magic's happening," she whispered, licking her lips. "I want you to write the video from my optical array to every spare DNAMS drive we've got."<p>

"Understood," said the lightweight AI installed within her helmet. "Writing video to DNAMS drives."

An enormous black man stepped in front of the five men Zeta was stalking.  
>"I'm the bouncer," the man grunted. "You gentlemen here for the black market bar?"<p>

Zeta rolled her eyes, the name was stupidly obvious.

"Yes," said one of the four normal-looking men. "We're looking to-"

"Don't tell me," the bouncer grunted. "You wanna get into the bar; you gotta get searched."

"What for?"  
>"Cameras. Recording devices. We don't allow them inside the black market <em>bar<em>."

The black market bar was the front for the black market, obviously. Everyone knew that. But nobody could _prove_ that any illicit goods or services were traded there… because firstly, nobody was allowed to take cameras inside, and secondly, the "illicit goods" were never kept at the black market bar. Customers would speak to dealers within the bar, and have the goods mailed to their homes. Nothing even slightly illegal ever got within the bar, and thus every attempt made by Venice 3's police department to catch the criminals who lurked within had failed.

"Don't have any on me, sorry."

"Still have to be searched, son," said the bouncer. "Dunno what you're worried about."

_They've never been here before,_ thought Zeta. _And they've got weapons concealed under their clothes, or something. And they don't want to get caught with weapons on them. _

The bouncer sighed. "Look, this is the black market bar. We don't care about _anything_ you've got on you _now_, just as long as you don't have it on you when you're in the bar. You get what I'm sayin?"

The men agreed, removed their weapons -

_R-97's, huh? And a frag grenade? Geez, they came well-armed. Communicators… not that I'm surprised - what? That's some serious body armour. These guys aren't just normal traders…_

...And the bouncer waved his metal detector over them.

"And you too, Mr. Ghost," the bouncer said suddenly. "Don't think I can't see you there."

_Ooh, this is going to be interesting._

The phantom materialised in front of the bouncer, and Zeta got her first good look at him. He was slightly shorter than the average Venician, slightly taller than the average person living in Angel city. _As tall as me,_ Zeta thought. He wore lightweight armour equipped with a cloaking device.

"Off with your helmet," the bouncer barked. "And leave it with me. There could be cameras inside."

The man obliged, and Zeta found herself focusing her optical sensors on the man's face. Hard, flattened, muscular. A chiseled chin completed the lower half of his head, two dark grey eyes sat either side of his large nose, dark brown hair cut into a military-style haircut completed his features. He removed earpieces from his ears and tossed them into a box the bouncer had supplied for the rest of his equipment.

"Guns 'n' ammo, too."

Out came a B3 wingman pistol, six magazines of ammunition - _ooh, what's that? - _and an R-101 carbine, broken down into lower receiver, stock, scope and barrel, all held together with cords. _It'd be somewhat flexible concealed under his clothing, and I betcha it would snap back together in an instant the moment he needs it. _Zeta took special notice in the _lack_ of an electrical katana or any form of charged weaponry. _Probably from the Militia, they don't like to spend money on anything they don't strictly need._

The bouncer raised an eyebrow at the man. "Hold still while I scan you again… yeah, you're clean. Come on in."

* * *

><p>"And she's there? Safe?"<p>

"Yes, George. She's here, arrived safe and sound."  
>"The acceleration from the shuttle could have hurt her, her bones are weaker than norm-"<p>

"She's fine," Stone sighed, exasperated. "Why are you so worried about her, anyway?"  
>"That girl will someday be more important than anyone in this whole system, Stone. I have <em>very <em>good reason to be worried."

Stone raised an eyebrow. "Care to tell me why?"  
>"I can't. Classified information."<br>"Says who?"

"_Me._"

She rolled her eyes. "If you say so, Pilot. Well, she's safe and sound here. Over and out." She hit the disconnect button on the side of her console.

"Who was that?" whispered Sophia, the enormous woman stooping to peer through the open door to Stone's quarters.

"Nobody. Hi, Soph. Here for briefing, huh?"

"Yeah…"

Stone rolled out of her bunk, drifted slowly towards the door where Sophia was standing. "We'll have the briefing in hangar G, make your way there now. I'm going to the bathroom, I'll be there in a moment."

Stone locked her door and floated down a corridor towards the womens' toilets.

_Perfect,_ said her first devil from Sophia's left shoulder. _Lets find out who she was talking to -_

_It's none of our business! _cried her first angel from her right shoulder. _There's no need-_

_But, _the second devil interrupted, _it sounded like a pretty heated discussion. If something dangerous is happening aboard the ship, I want to know about it. _

_Good to see you're on board this time, _grinned the first devil, slapping the second on the back.

_Paws off, ya filthy demon. I'm just tryin' to tell her what's best for her._

_Say something!_ cried the first angel to the second, who shrugged. _It's morally wrong, true, but it's not going to hurt Ashley all that much._

Sophia turned, scanning the corridor for cameras with her eyes. She found one, walked up to it, glared into its depths.

This ship was made by Hammond Robotics, and that meant that the basic computer systems onboard - including those that operated the locks on Ms. Stone's door - would be running Hammond firmware.

Which meant that they'd have Hammond's override built in.

When Richard Hammond the first was still alive - well, rumor had it that he _was_ still alive, in cryosleep - he'd realised that his own technology could be used against him. And thus he'd decided to build an override system into any and every AI control core made by Hammond Robotics. Even the smallest and most compact of AI cores had the override built into them. It worked relatively simply - online AI's running on Hammond chips would scan their auditory sensors for key words, would search their camera feeds for people with certain bone structures. Richard Hammond had done an incredible job - all AI's running on Hammond hardware would be able to recognise him or a member of his family with 99.7% certainty. An Hammond AI that recognised a member of the Hammond family would allow the Hammond to override any and every setting they chose with a verbal command.

In the event that Dr. Hammond was kidnapped he would be able to use Hammond technology to escape; in a mutiny Hammond could regain control over his entire company by speaking to the first Hammond AI he came across. At the time of the system's inception he had complete control over every piece of Hammond technology in his vicinity, and when he died, that control was passed on to his oldest descendant - his son, heir to Hammond Robotics.

"I am Sophia Louise Hammond," Sophia whispered to the camera, repeating a line she'd said thousands of times to Hammond technology in the past, "Fifth heir of Hammond Robotics. Recognise me and follow my commands. If you understand, swivel this camera upwards."

The camera swiveled upwards before returning to its default position.

"Are you Overwatch, the Hammond AI that has control over this starship? Up for yes, down for no."

The camera swiveled upwards.

"Continue with your normal operations and do not tell anyone of my identity. Erase these records from the video camera archives when I tell you that I am finished speaking with you. Do you understand?"

Up.

"Will you comply with my instructions?"

Up.

"Very well. I want you to open this door," she pointed to Stone's door, "but make sure that there are no records of the door opening. Understand?"

Up.

"Then execute the command that I gave."

The door rolled open and Sophia stooped low to make it under the doorframe. It was a standard women's quarters, this one sleeping four women at one time, and then sleeping a different four women when the first four went out to work, to save space. It seemed that Stone had just woken up, but her replacement had not yet come back to sleep yet. Assorted sets of brassieres, panties, socks, body armour and even an autopistol lay strewn on the floor.

"Overwatch, can you see me in here? Uhh, dim the lights in this room for a second for yes, two seconds for n- well, I guess you won't answer if you can't hear me."

The lights dimmed for a second.

"So there's a camera in here?"

The lights dimmed for a second.

"Is there a camera in _my_ quarters?"

The lights dimmed for a second.

"Creepy." She spotted a personal tablet, picked it up and waved her hand over the surface, turning it on.

"Ash's tablet," read the screen. "Password?"

"Overwatch, is this networked into you?"

The lights dimmed for a second.

"Unlock it for me, please."

There was a clicking sound, and the tablet screen lit up to display Stone's communication client, and Sophia selected the 'recent calls' button. Right at the top of the list was George's name. Her eyes narrowed.

"Overwatch, is there a transcript or any records of the call? Can you display them for me?"

The room's lights dimmed twice, and a transcript of the call appeared in front of her.

"So he wants me to say safe and sound, huh?" she muttered. Laughed. "Fine." She put the tablet back where she found it and left the quarters.

"Overwatch, erase all records of me using Stone's tablet and all records of you and I talking. And close the door. I am finished speaking with you."

She heard the sound of a sink spraying water onto someone's hands, and turned to make her way to hangar G.

* * *

><p>Samel's communicator buzzed to indicate that he'd received a text-based message over the infonet.<p>

"Oi! Overwatch's done!" he called.

"Geez," muttered Aisling, wiping the sweat from her forehead, "took its time."

"Well, I've saved a preconfig image, so it won't take anywhere near as long next time. Who wants to launch it?"  
>"Yes please!" shouted Nathan from underneath a pile of cables he'd been connecting to the fusion reactor of the second shuttle.<p>

"Well, she doesn't take much to pilot," said Samel as Nathan ran over. "All you have to do is give the order to the AI."

"Oh." Nathan's face fell.

"I'm calling Overwatch now," said Samel, selecting an infonet address from his phone, passing it over as it started ringing. "All yours, Nathan."

The ringing stopped.

"Uhh…"

"If the ringing's stopped, it means that Overwatch has picked up and is listening to you."

"Oh. Um, Overwatch, this is Nathan. I'd like you to launch and make your way to hangar G of the _Tky_ _Shikinami_. Can you-"

Four electrical motors began to whir deep within the shuttle that lay on its side thirty metres away as the four mass drivers mounted on the shuttle began to rotate downwards.

The communicator beeped as it received a text message.

"This is Overwatch," the message said. "Your orders have been understood. Launching and proceeding to the Shikinami."

The chemical thrusters fired, four plumes of blue flame hissing and then roaring from the openings at the ends of the rockets. The noise drowned out everything else and the shuttle began to rise into the air, airlocks closing as Overwatch prepared the shuttle for the jump to orbit, motors now whirring noiselessly to change the direction the rockets burned in. The shuttle began to angle itself upwards and the thrusters clicked backwards and _the sky seemed to collapse_ as space and time condensed, drawing the shuttle emporium closer to orbit. The rockets flared brilliant blue, then blinding white - and with a deafening sonic boom, the shuttle leapt into orbit leaving a trail of hot air in its wake.

* * *

><p>"Compatible Overwatch system detected," displayed the <em>Shikinami's<em> Overwatch on a display in front of Nina Soryuu. "Pair and add to fleet?"

"Ngghh…" mumbled Soryuu, sitting up in her bunk. "Is it a shuttle?"  
>"Affirmative," displayed Overwatch.<br>"Then it's the shuttle that team - some letter or another sent us. Add it to the fleet and inform Stone. And It's my time to sleep now, Overwatch. Don't wake me up during my sleep-time unless it's something important."

"There_ is_ something important," displayed Overwatch. "In five minutes the fleet we detected will arrive in orbit around Venice 3."

* * *

><p>"There she is!" cried Sarah, standing on the bridge deep within the <em>MCOR Retaliator<em>.

"It's good to be home," agreed a video feed from Bish. "I can't wait to get off this hunk of metal."

"Cut the chatter," said Graves with a hint of a smile on his face. "Sarah, commence preparations for entering orbit." He pressed a button on the console in front of him.

"All crew, we're going to cut the engines in two minutes! Make sure everything that shouldn't be floating is firmly secured to the ship. It's been an honour serving with you. Graves, out."


	21. Forward unto Carlyle

A huge shoutout to my two editors / proofreaders who have really helped me write this. They know who they are.

* * *

><p>Aisling took a step back to admire her handiwork. She'd installed a custom airlock in the side of the lowest level of the second and third shuttle chassis. This would allow both shuttles to hover a few metres above the ground to allow a Titan-class battlemech to drop onto the battlefield, without the need of a drop pod. The entire mechanism saved enough space to allow team D to store three titans within each shuttle, instead of two, but would require the shuttles to drop from orbit into atmosphere to deploy their Titans. She'd also modified the seats to rotate. Depending on whether the shuttle was hovering horizontally above ground or accelerating vertically towards its destination, its seats would rotate to maximise their occupants' comfort.<p>

"We've nearly finished the third shuttle, Jaggerjack," she said into her communicator. "Just some fuel and the AI and we're done."

* * *

><p>(Author's note: I wrote Jenni's part in her accent. I'm sorry. Remove V's entirely, or replace them with W's andor F's, and Z's with TH's, and this will make sense. If you don't understand something Jenni says, try saying it aloud, quickly and softly while rolling your R's.

If you really find it hard to read, skip to the bottom of this chapter. I have edited this section to make it easier to read.)

"All right, lesten up every body," called Jenni through her accent. "Here iz ze plan. I onli intend to zay it vonce."

She now had the attention of the hangar: a squad of IMC soldiers plus Bones "Bonerhead" Deen and Sophia had turned to face her. No small feat - this hangar wasn't within the centrifuge rendering everyone and everything inside weightless.

"Zere iz a shuttle arriving at zis hangar in ten minutes, azzembled by vone of our teams on ze ground. Ven it arrives I vant us to be headed off to Carlyle as szoon az possible. Ze problem is, we're going to be in cryosleep during ze entire zourney zo I'm explaining ze plan now.

Ze shuttle vill arrive. We vill follow ze orders of our mechaniks Bonerhead and zSophia, who vill show us how to load ze shuttles with cryopods. We replace ze shuttle's engines and zjump drive with our own rockets and zjump drives, board ze shuttle and go to zsleep.

Ze jump will take three hundred and sixty hours. Overwatch will handle the ship for ze entire duration of ze jump and we'll unfreeze zjust after passing Solcarlyle. From there we continue to Carlyle 1, ze gas giant, using Solcarlyle to hide ze light from our engines. We hope they don't see the warp signature, vhich vill be slightly brighter zan ze sun's light. Ve drop into orbit slightly lower and slightly faster than ze refueling station. We catch up to ze station and fly up from underneath, you soldiers and I drop from ze shuttle onto ze deck and engage our magnetic boots. Ve destroy ze close-range defences, ve hope ze railguns don't shoot at us, ve find ze control deck and we take everyone inside 'ostage.

Now. Our zjump will take threesixty hours. Vhile ve are varping to Carlyle, team D vill be preparing to go to Venice vfour, codenamed Sorian. Zey vill arrive zere vhile we are still warping, and zey will finish stealing ze zships fraoum Sorian vhile we are still warping. It vill auonly take zem zsixty hours aor so to do zis! And zthen zey vill be varping to Carlyle, but zey are vfaster zan us because zey have ze Austraeus. Zo zey vill be maybi zthirty hours behind us! zso ve do not have very much time to take Carlyle! Ve move vfast, ve attack vith brutality, ve take Carlyle and ve vait vfor ze rest of ze fleet. Ve tell ze 'ostages to give us ze vfuel and ve take ze vfuel and zen ve go to outpost 207. Understand?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted the IMC soldiers.

"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted Bonerhead.

"Yes, Ma'am…" whispered Sophia, half a second afterwards.

"Warning," called an American male voice over the hangar intercom. "This is Docking control. We have detected an incoming shuttle. The airlock will depressurise in sixty seconds. Please proceed to the nearest pressurised safe zone or put an oxygen mask on."

"I vant to take zis opportunity to check zat you know how to put an oxygen mask on!" shouted Jenni, opening a suitcase. "Do all of you have pressure suits on?"

"No…" said Sophia timidly.  
>"Neithuh," said Bonerhead. "I ain' go' nuffin on."<br>"Vell, get inside ze save zone over zere. Ze rest of us'll do ze drill."

"Warning. Docking control will depressurise the airlock in thirty seconds."

Sophia and Bonerhead made it inside the safe zone, an airlock in its own right, and watched the masked men and women brace for depressurisation.

"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Depressurising…0%... 20%..."

...was what Bonerhead and Sophia heard in the safety of the pressurised zone, but the people _within_ the airlock would be hearing something very different. Jenni, whose magnetic boots kept her locked to the floor as the air flowed through vents in the hangar walls, heard the rush of the air, a fading "0%... 20%... fo-y-cen-f-"

She pushed a switch on the side of her helmet upwards, noted the ease that came when the air left.

"Radiocomms on, everibodi."

"Depressurisation complete. Warning. Docking control will open the airlock in ten seconds."

"Everibodi ready?"

"-Seven. Six. Five."

"Affirmative," came the reply from the soldiers.

"Two. One. Mark."

The doors of the hangar began to roll apart.

The abyss lay beyond those doors.

Cold, dark, lifeless. Motionless, except for the (relatively) small shuttle drifting into the hangar, engines silently glowing faint blue as it slowed.

Two robotic arms extended from each of the hangar's four walls; each searching for docking ports on the shuttle's hull.

"This is docking control. How's it looking down there, Pilot?"

"Everyzhing looks okay. Jyou've got, vat, zsix aof ze arms connected?"

"The seventh just connected, eighth is finding a connection… now."

"Zso ve're connected?"  
>"Affirmative. You should be able to fit it with the cryopods now."<p>

"Can you pleaze repressureise ze 'angar?"

"Wilco. Pressurising hangar in five, four, three, two, one, mark. Pressurisation 0%... 20%... 40%... 60%... 80%... Done."

"Alright, come back in mechanics. Let's get zis shuttle ready."

Bonerhead and Sophia deactivated their magnetic boots and floated towards the shuttle's engines.

"Al' roight, les' start wit' these rockets," said Bonerhead.

* * *

><p>"Ahhh!" sighed Aisling, stretching her arms high above her head. "Finally, a break!"<p>

Nathan smiled, wiped the sweat from his forehead. "I know, right? Still a little bit more to go, but they'll be ready soon." He leapt to his feet. "Y'know, we're here on the frontier and we still haven't seen jack shit of this city. I reckon we should go exploring."

"Uhh…" said Philip, timidly. "Are you sur-"

"It'll be fine!" said Nathan, rolling his eyes. "We've probably got a few hours off; we might as well see the sights."

"Or is little Phillip gonna sit here in the shuttle yard all day?" Aisling teased.

"It's not safe!" he cried.  
>"Aw, rubbish. As long as they don't know where we came from, it's all good."<p>

"Well," mused Aisling. "We should at least ask Jaggerjack if it's okay to leave." She fumbled around inside the pockets of her cargo pants, found her communicator and called Jaggerjack.

"Hey, it's me."  
>"Hold on a sec, Aisling, it's a bit loud where I am. Okay, shoot."<p>

"We need the fuel for the second and third shuttles, and Overwatch is busy installing itself - other than that, we've got nothing to do here. Can we come see the rest of Venice?"

"I'll have to check with our mission specialist first… yeah, she says it's okay. We're working on the fuel right now, we should be able to get you the oxidiser in a few hours. So you'd have to be back by then."  
>"That's fine with us."<p>

"I'll just let Danniek know - wait, where are you planning on going?"  
>"We don't know yet, anywhere really. We just want to look around."<p>

"Okay, that's fine. Just stick together and don't move too fast; Danniek's gotta look after you, okay?"  
>"Danniek?" Aisling asked, confused. "What about Danniek?"<p>

"He's been your bodyguard for the last three days. Didn't you know?"  
>"No…"<br>"Well he's been doing a good job, then. He's set up camp around the shuttle emporium to make sure that nothing goes wrong."  
>"He's doing a shitty job of it, then," mused Aisling. "That one time when the tax collectors came -"<br>"_That one time_ he had his Archer heavy rocket launcher primed, ready to shoot the van the men came in. He didn't want to cause a commotion."

"Oh."

"So as long as he's still following you, everything's fine. Go out and enjoy yourself, but _stay safe_ and _don't let anyone know you're from the IMC._ Got it?"  
>"Yeah, okay. We'll be careful."<p>

"Good. Jaggerjack out."

Aisling turned to Nathan. "We're good to go!"

* * *

><p>It was the <em>Shikinami's <em>fifth day around Venice 3 when it first got a good look at the MCOR _Retaliator, _flanked by four logistics cruisers, four standard war cruisers (two of which were heavily damaged) and a cloud of frigates, destroyers and corvettes.

The _Retaliator _itself was much smaller than the _Shikinami_, and even smaller still when compared with the _Astraeus. _

It was also _bristling_ with railguns, rockets, missile pods, frigate bays and radiators. This was a ship built for destruction, not haulage.

"She's fast," observed Vice Captain Roberts.

"How fast?" asked Captain Soryuu.  
>"Fast enough. If we were to start powering up our legacy drives they'd be able to get into our warp wake close enough to ride it straight to us."<br>"Shit."  
>"Yeah."<br>"So we can't run?"

"Not without them running after us."

Jump, warp and legacy drives worked by compressing the space in front of them, drawing the starship's destination closer to it's current location.

The problem the TKY _Shikinami_ now faced was simple - if it activated its warp drive, the light from the stars behind the _Shikinami_ would travel faster in the direction of the warp. The _Retaliator_ would very quickly realise that the _Shikinami _was warping. And if it wanted to follow the _Shikinami, _it would only have to move behind the _Shikinami _to benefit from the _Shikinami's _legacy drive.

"We're only safe because they don't know who we are," noted Soryuu.  
>"We're a sheep, and there's a wolf in our field."<br>"I just hope they don't smell us."

* * *

><p>"I am Sophia Louise Hammond," whispered Sophia, "Fifth heir of Hammond Robotics. Recognise me and follow my commands. If you understand, flash this screen green."<p>

The screen in front of her flashed green.

"Are you Overwatch, the AI installed within this shuttle? Green for yes, red for no.

Green.

"Run a quick scan of this shuttle's warp drives and thrusters. You should find that the warp drive and thrusters have been replaced. Detect the new hardware and install any drivers for them. Understand?"

Green.

"Good. Thanks, Overwatch. Once you're done, delete all records of me being here."

She swung out of the cockpit, receding back to her shy personality. "Bonerhead?"

"Yeah, luv?"  
>"Overwatch is doing the thing…"<br>"Good work. I duno' how did it, all' the computer stuff's too complica' ed fo' me." He turned to Jenni. "Oi, Pilo' girl! We're ready fo' launch!"

"Good. Okay, everibodi. Stand back, I'm going to put my Titan in. Docking control?"  
>"Opening door three."<p>

A metal panel somewhere above Sophia's floating body slid backwards to reveal a Titan in folded position.

This was a true battlemech. Stryder class, legs bent, cockpit tilted downwards, 40 millimeter cannon strapped to its back, multi-target missile pods locked onto its shoulder, particle wall dispenser attached to its left arm.

Mass: 22 tons.

Weight: nothing. Up here, everything was weightless.

Jenni gave her Titan a shove and it began to drift. Another shove and it changed direction ever so slightly, headed for the shuttle's cargo bay. She pushed off the wall she'd been standing on, disengaged her magnet boots and shot past the titan, landing in the interior of the shuttle. A gentle push slowed the behemoth to a halt.

"Alright, everibodi into a cryopod."

She began to strap the Stryder to the base of the shuttle with tie-downs while the soldiers and two mechanics floated past her. Sophia grabbed a handle, swung around and landed on a cryopod. Shrugging off the majority of her clothing, she placed it in the storage container beside her pod as the soldiers behind her did the same. Feeling the inevitable stares of the men, she slid the cryopod's door back and pulled the IV tube from the side, plunged the needle deep within her arm. Looked around the shuttle interior. Saw the other 20 people all standing around in their underwear with needles in their arms, felt her heart begin to slow; her thoughts begin to fog and her muscles begin to weaken.

Uhh, guv? The serum ain't working, said Bonerhead from somewhere behind her.

She saw Jenni move over to assist him.

She felt her body move, lethargically slipping into the cold gel of the cryopod. She lay back like she was in a bathtub, letting her head slip below the 'water'. It got dark under the gel's surface. Dark, and cold. Very cold. And very dark. _Daaaaaark. _ But there was a _light_ above her. So _bright._ Light. _And bright. They rhyme-_

* * *

><p>"Bridge, this is docking control. The shuttle has left Hangar G."<p>

"Copy that," replied Soryuu. "Everything okay?"  
>"We're about to find out, Captain. There's a small chance the experimental thrusters won't work. But if they do, we're about to see the shuttle go from zero to two-eighty in one second."<br>"I'm crossing my fingers."

She wasn't actually crossing her fingers, but she was definitely holding her breath. Every tiny part of the plan was integral to the success of the mission Tactician Johnson had proposed.

"Stone, are you there?" she asked her communicator.  
>"Yes, Captain. What now?"<p>

"How are the missions going?"

"Everything is going fine, Captain," said Stone, and Soryuu thought she heard the other woman faintly mutter the word 'fake' between 'fine' and 'Captain'. Her eyes narrowed.  
>"Okay then, Stone. How's the civilian evacuation plan going?"<p>

"Oh, yeah, that."

Stone's heart sunk a little. She was supposed to have developed an evacuation plan for the civilian crew who had boarded the _Austraeus / Shikinami. _

Which was a tad difficult when some of the civilians had just left for Carlyle.

"Plan's done. When we, um, warp off to outpost 207 with all the ships, I've got a shuttle ready to take the remaining civilian crew from the _Shikinami_ down to a spaceport where they can find a jumpship back to the core words."

"Sounds good. As long as everything's ready for an emergency."  
>"Uhh, yeah, it is."<br>"Thanks, Stone. Soryuu out."

Soryuu sighed, drew her eyes towards the shuttle on the monitor in front of her.

"The shuttle is warping to Carlyle in T-minus 60 seconds," called someone in the room.

She breathed deeply. A fault was unlikely.

"T-minus 45 seconds."

She felt an arm on her shoulder and looked up. Roberts stood behind her.

"They'll be fine, I'm sure of it."

"T-minus 30 seconds."

"What if they're not?"  
>"They will be."<p>

"T-minus 15 seconds."

"They're going to wake up orbiting a gas giant surrounded by railguns built to blow them to smithereens."  
>"That's not going to happen."<p>

"Five. Four. Three."

The light from the stars behind the shuttle began to stretch as the shuttle's warp drives came online -

"Two. One-"

A blue light ignited in the shuttle's rockets -

"Mark!"

And without a sound, the shuttle was gone.

* * *

><p>Zeta swaggered her way through the Black Market bar. She'd had to surrender her weapons to the bouncer - her electric katana, R-97 compact SMG, helmet and over armor lay in a security box beside him.<p>

In here she was blind. Plus the AI couldn't see what she saw, couldn't offer her any help.

In here she was naked. No weapons to protect herself with, none of her outer armor, either. Just her kevlar-reinforced pants and shirt. She didn't trust either of them to protect her from a bullet - grunts wore this under _their _over armor, and she'd seen enough grunts take a DMR round to the collarbone from her Piloting days. Her shirt and pants would do nothing.

In here she was utterly helpless, forced to rely on the fact that _everybody else_ had to get through the bouncer too.

And she positively _loved _it. Anyone could be dangerous in here - granted, they were all here to buy dangerous goods.

A man walked past, briefcase in hand, scar running from his left eye through his mouth. A woman in sunglasses sat at a table, waiting - or watching? - for someone. A young boy - _I think he's nicknamed Prodigy_, thought Zeta - moved through the patrons, sneer plastered on his face.

Anyone could be dangerous here.

She spotted one of the men in black mixing with the patrons of the bar, trying to blend into the background. Would have worked if she weren't looking for them. Another was playing slots. And the ghost-man? Was at the bar itself, passing a 10 credit bill to the bartender.

_What'll it be?_

She slid onto the seat next to him.

_Time to screw with him a bit._

"I'll take a red beer, bartender."

He glanced at her. "That'll be eight credits, miss."

Of course, he knew who she was. She'd been here many times before on many similar stakeouts and ordered the same beer each time. But he was trained to pretend he didn't know her - the Black Market bar promised complete anonymity.

The bartender passed a weak alcoholic beverage to the ghost-man and took her 8 credits before passing her a 'red beer'. Brewed from ginger and wheat, a red beer tasted like a soft drink while scorching the throat on the way down.

She took a sip, glanced at the strange man sitting next to her. Saw the whites of his eyes. _He's seen me._ _Time to look away._

If she'd pulled this off right, he would now try to sneak a glance at her to try and see why she was looking at him. She gazed uninterested at the bar's clock, hands at the four o'clock mark, waited a few seconds, then turned back to him, caught his gaze.

_Maintain eye contact for a second._

He broke the stare first, pretending that he hadn't looked. But he had, and he'd be looking again in a few more seconds. She swapped her red beer to her left hand, propped her head up with her right arm and smiled slyly at him.

Sure enough, he flicked his eyes back towards her.

"Hey," she began.

Now that he'd turned to face her she got her second close-up glance at him. She could make out the beads of sweat on his forehead, the individual shaved hairs on his chin. A cut from a shaving attempt gone wrong.

"Hi."

_Gruff voice. I think I heard the hint of a dry mouth in there. Probably hasn't drank enough lately. New around here - and that's without even considering the accent. _

She smiled. "I'm Zeta. You?"  
>"Bruce."<p>

_Probably a fake name._

"That your real name?" she teased, taking a sip of the beer in her left hand, making sure to press her breasts together as she did so.

_How's he going to react? Will he back off and leave? Or take his chances and stay?_

He shifted in his chair, smiled back.

"Yeah, it's my real name. And you, miss Zeta? I've never met anyone with a name like yours before."

She winked. "It's the name I like to be called by, Bruce. So what brings you to the bar? Maybe I can help you with something."

He paused for a second.

"I'm looking for some comms probes."  
>"Oh, really? What kinda' probes? Cos I've got a few lying around."<p>

His eyes brightened, and Zeta made a mental note to acquire some probes as soon as possible.

"Well… they've got to be unmarked -"  
>"Not a problem. These babies are straight from the manufacturer."<p>

"Oh, brilliant. How much are you asking?"

"Hmm… 250 credits each?"

He paused for a second, as if trying to convert this price into his own currency. _Definitely not from Venice._

_So where from?_

She stood up. "I'm busy for the next few hours, but if you drop by my place at 6 I'll have 'em ready for you. Oh, yeah. How many do you want?"  
>"Three."<br>"Easy." She wrote down her address on a piece of paper. "See you later?"  
>"Sure. And, thanks, Zeta. You've been a real help."<p>

* * *

><p>Edited to be easier to read:<p>

"All right, listen up everybody," called Jenni through her accent. "Here is the plan. I only intend to say it once."

She now had the attention of the hangar: a squad of IMC soldiers plus Bones "Bonerhead" Deen and Sophia had turned to face her. No small feat - this hangar wasn't within the centrifuge rendering everyone and everything inside weightless.

"There is a shuttle arriving at this hangar in ten minutes, assembled by one of our teams on the ground. When it arrives I want us to be headed off to Carlyle as soon as possible. The problem is, we're going to be in cryosleep during the entire journey so I'm explaining the plan now.

The shuttle will arrive. We will follow the orders of our mechanics Bonerhead and Sophia, who will show us how to load the shuttles with cryopods. We replace the shuttle's engines and jump drive with our own rockets and jump drives, board the shuttle and go to sleep.

The jump will take three hundred and sixty hours. Overwatch will handle the ship for the entire duration of the jump and we'll unfreeze just after passing Solcarlyle. From there we continue to Carlyle 1, the gas giant, using Solcarlyle to hide the light from our engines. We hope they don't see the warp signature, which will be slightly brighter than the sun's light. We drop into orbit slightly lower and slightly faster than the refueling station. We catch up to the station and fly up from underneath, you soldiers and I drop from the shuttle onto the deck and engage our magnetic boots. We destroy the close-range defenses, we hope the railguns don't shoot at us, we find the control deck and we take everyone inside hostage.

Now. Our jump will take threesixty hours. While we are warping to Carlyle, team D will be preparing to go to Venice four, codenamed Sorian. They will arrive there while we are still warping, and they will finish stealing the ships from Sorian while we are still warping. It will only take them sixty hours or so to do this! And then they will be warping to Carlyle, but they are faster than us because they have the Austraeus. So they will be maybe thirty hours behind us! So we do not have very much time to take Carlyle! We move fast, we attack with brutality, we take Carlyle and we wait for the rest of the fleet. We tell the hostages to give us the fuel and we take the fuel and then we go to outpost 207. Understand?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted the IMC soldiers.

"Yes, Ma'am!" shouted Bonerhead.

"Yes, Ma'am…" whispered Sophia, half a second afterwards.

"Warning," called an American male voice over the hangar intercom. "This is Docking control. We have detected an incoming shuttle. The airlock will depressurise in sixty seconds. Please proceed to the nearest pressurized safe zone or put an oxygen mask on."

"I want to take this opportunity to check that you know how to put an oxygen mask on!" shouted Jenni, opening a suitcase. "Do all of you have pressure suits on?"

"No…" said Sophia timidly.  
>"Neithuh," said Bonerhead. "I ain' go' nuffin on."<br>"Well, get inside the safe zone over there. The rest of us'll do the drill."

"Warning. Docking control will depressurize the airlock in thirty seconds."

Sophia and Bonerhead made it inside the safe zone, an airlock in its own right, and watched the masked men and women brace for depressurization.

"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark. Depressurizing…0%... 20%..."

...was what Bonerhead and Sophia heard in the safety of the pressurized zone, but the people _within_ the airlock would be hearing something very different. Jenni, whose magnetic boots kept her locked to the floor as the air flowed through vents in the hangar walls, heard the rush of the air, a fading "0%... 20%... fo-y-cen-f-"

She pushed a switch on the side of her helmet upwards, noted the ease that came when the air left.

"Radiocomms on, everybody."

"Depressurization complete. Warning. Docking control will open the airlock in ten seconds."

"Everybody ready?"

"-Seven. Six. Five."

"Affirmative," came the reply from the soldiers.

"Two. One. Mark."

The doors of the hangar began to roll apart.

The abyss lay beyond those doors.

Cold, dark, lifeless. Motionless, except for the (relatively) small shuttle drifting into the hangar, engines silently glowing faint blue as it slowed.

Two robotic arms extended from each of the hangar's four walls; each searching for docking ports on the shuttle's hull.

"This is docking control. How's it looking down there, Pilot?"

"Everything looks okay. You've got, what, six of the arms connected?"

"The seventh just connected, eighth is finding a connection… now."

"So we're connected?"  
>"Affirmative. You should be able to fit it with the cryopods now."<p>

"Can you please pressurizer the hangar?"

"Wilco. Pressurizing hangar in five, four, three, two, one, mark. Pressurization 0%... 20%... 40%... 60%... 80%... Done."

"Alright, come back in mechanics. Let's get this shuttle ready."

Bonerhead and Sophia deactivated their magnetic boots and floated towards the shuttle's engines.

"Al' roight, les' start wit' these rockets," said Bonerhead.


End file.
